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Book II - Age 5 to Age 12

We have now reached the second phase of life; infancy, strictly
so-called, 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 till an age for which there is another
term.

When children begin to talk they cry less. This progress is quite
natural; one language supplants another. As soon as they can say
"It hurts me," 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 me," it will take a very sharp pain
to make him cry.

If the child is delicate and sensitive, if by nature he begins to
cry for nothing, I let him cry in vain and soon check his tears at
their source. So long as he cries I will not go near him; I come
at once when he leaves off crying. He will soon be quiet when he
wants to call me, or rather he will utter a single cry. Children
learn the meaning of signs by their effects; they have no other
meaning for them. However much a child hurts himself when he is
alone, he rarely cries, unless he expects to be heard.

Should he fall or bump his head, or make his nose bleed, or cut
his fingers, I shall show no alarm, nor shall I make any fuss over
him; I shall take no notice, at any rate at first. The harm is done;
he must bear it; all my zeal could only frighten him more and make
him more nervous. Indeed it is not the blow but the fear of it which
distresses us when we are hurt. I shall spare him this suffering
at least, for he will certainly regard the injury as he sees me
regard it; if he finds that I hasten anxiously to him, if I pity
him or comfort him, he will think he is badly hurt. If he finds I
take no notice, he will soon recover himself, 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.

I shall not take pains to prevent Emile hurting himself; far from
it, I should be vexed if he never hurt himself, if he grew up
unacquainted with pain. To bear pain is his first and most useful
lesson. It seems as if children were small and weak on purpose to
teach them these valuable lessons without 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 seizes 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 itself, or even to do itself any serious harm, unless
it 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 with which the child is surrounded to shield
him on every side so that he grows up at the mercy of pain, with
neither courage nor experience, so that he thinks he is killed by
a pin-prick and faints at the sight of blood?

With our foolish and pedantic methods we are always preventing children
from learning what they could learn much better by themselves, while
we neglect what we alone can teach them. Can anything be sillier
than the pains taken to teach them to walk, as if there were any
one who was unable to walk when he grows up through his nurse's
neglect? How many we see walking badly all their life because they
were ill taught?

Emile shall have no head-pads, no go-carts, no leading-strings;
or at least as soon as he can put one foot before another he shall
only be supported along pavements, and he shall be taken quickly
across them. [Footnote: There is nothing so absurd and hesitating
as the gait of those who have been kept too long in leading-strings
when they were little. This is one of the observations which are
considered trivial because they are true.] Instead of keeping him
mewed up in a stuffy room, take him out into a meadow every day;
let him run about, let him struggle and fall again and again, the
oftener the better; he will learn all the sooner to pick himself
up. The delights of liberty will make up for many bruises. My
pupil will hurt himself oftener than yours, but he will always be
merry; your pupils may receive fewer injuries, but they are always
thwarted, constrained, and sad. I doubt whether they are any better
off.

As their strength increases, children have also less need for tears.
They can do more for themselves, they need the help of others less
frequently. With strength comes the sense to use it. It is with
this second phase that the real personal life has its beginning; it
is then that the child becomes conscious of himself. During every
moment of his life memory calls up the feeling of self; he becomes
really one person, always the same, and therefore capable of joy
or sorrow. Hence we must begin to consider him as a moral being.

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 live to be a man.

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 which he may
never enjoy? Even if I considered that education wise in its aims,
how could I view without indignation those poor wretches subjected
to an intolerable slavery and condemned like galley-slaves to endless
toil, with no certainty that they will gain anything by it? The
age of harmless mirth is spent in tears, punishments, threats,
and slavery. You torment the poor thing for his good; you fail
to see that you are calling Death to snatch him from these gloomy
surroundings. Who can say how many children fall victims to the
excessive care of their fathers and mothers? They are happy to
escape from this cruelty; this is all that they gain from the ills
they are forced to endure: they die without regretting, having
known nothing of life but its sorrows.

Men, be kind to your fellow-men; this is your first duty, kind to
every age and station, kind to all that is not foreign to humanity.
What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness? Love childhood,
indulge its sports, its pleasures, its delightful instincts. Who
has not sometimes regretted that age when laughter was ever on the
lips, and when the heart was ever at peace? Why rob these innocents
of the joys which pass so quickly, of that precious gift which they
cannot abuse? 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 when death will call your children to him?
Do not lay up sorrow for yourselves by robbing them of the short
span which nature has allotted to them. As soon as they are aware
of the joy of life, let them rejoice in it, go that whenever God
calls them they may not die without having tasted the joy of life.

How people will cry out against me! I hear from afar the shouts of
that false wisdom which is ever dragging us onwards, counting the
present as nothing, and pursuing without a pause a future which
flies as we pursue, that false wisdom which removes us from our
place and never brings us to any other.

Now is the time, you say, to correct his evil tendencies; we must
increase suffering in childhood, when it is less keenly felt, to
lessen it in manhood. 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 vexations you heap upon him now? Why
inflict on him more ills than befit 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 wretched in the present with the more or less doubtful hope
of making him happy at some future day. If such blundering thinkers
fail to distinguish between liberty and licence, between a merry
child and a spoilt darling, let them learn to discriminate.

Let us not forget what befits our present state in the pursuit
of vain fancies. Mankind has its place in the sequence of things;
childhood has its place in the sequence of human life; the man must
be treated as a man and the child as a child. Give each his place,
and keep him there. Control human passions according to man's
nature; that is all we can do for his welfare. The rest depends on
external forces, which are beyond our control.

Absolute good and evil are unknown to us. In this life they are
blended together; we never enjoy any perfectly pure feeling, nor
do we remain for more than a moment in the same state. The feelings
of our minds, like the changes in our bodies, are in a continual
flux. Good and ill are common to all, but in varying proportions.
The happiest is he who suffers least; the most miserable is he who
enjoys least. Ever more sorrow than joy--this is the lot of all of
us. Man's happiness in this world is but a negative state; it must
be reckoned by the fewness of his ills.

Every feeling of hardship is inseparable from the desire to escape
from it; every idea of pleasure from the desire to enjoy it. All desire
implies a want, and all wants are painful; hence our wretchedness
consists in the disproportion between our desires and our powers.
A conscious being whose powers were equal to his desires would be
perfectly happy.

What then is human wisdom? Where is the path of true happiness?
The mere limitation of our desires is not enough, for if they were
less than our powers, part of our faculties would be idle, and we
should not enjoy our whole being; neither is the mere extension of
our powers enough, for if our desires were also increased we should
only be the more miserable. True happiness consists in decreasing
the difference between our desires and our powers, in establishing
a perfect equilibrium between the power and the will. Then only,
when all its forces are employed, will the soul be at rest and man
will find himself in his true position.

In this condition, nature, who does everything for the best, has
placed him from the first. To begin with, she gives him only such
desires as are necessary for self-preservation and such powers as
are sufficient for their satisfaction. All the rest she has stored
in his mind as a sort of reserve, to be drawn upon at need. It
is only in this primitive condition that we find the equilibrium
between desire and power, and then alone man is not unhappy. As
soon as his potential powers of mind begin to function, imagination,
more powerful than all the rest, awakes, and precedes all the rest.
It is imagination which enlarges the bounds of possibility for us,
whether for good or ill, and therefore stimulates and feeds desires
by the hope of satisfying them. But the object which seemed within
our grasp flies quicker than we can follow; when we think we have
grasped it, it transforms itself and is again far ahead of us.
We no longer perceive the country we have traversed, and we think
nothing of it; that which lies before us becomes vaster and stretches
still before us. Thus we exhaust our strength, yet never reach our
goal, and the nearer we are to pleasure, the further we are from
happiness.

On the other hand, the more nearly a man's condition approximates
to this state of nature the less difference is there between his
desires and his powers, and happiness is therefore less remote.
Lacking everything, he is never less miserable; for misery consists,
not in the lack of things, but in the needs which they inspire.

The world of reality has its bounds, the world of imagination is
boundless; as we cannot enlarge the one, let us restrict the other;
for all the sufferings which really make us miserable arise from
the difference between the real and the imaginary. Health, strength,
and a good conscience excepted, all the good things of life are a
matter of opinion; except bodily suffering and remorse, all our woes
are imaginary. You will tell me this is a commonplace; I admit it,
but its practical application is no commonplace, and it is with
practice only that we are now concerned.

What do you mean when you say, "Man is weak"? The term weak implies
a relation, a relation of the creature to whom it is applied. An
insect or a worm whose strength exceeds its needs is strong; an
elephant, a lion, a conqueror, a hero, a god himself, whose needs
exceed his strength is weak. The rebellious angel who fought against
his own nature was weaker than the happy mortal who is living at
peace according to nature. When man is content to be himself he
is strong indeed; when he strives to be more than man he is weak
indeed. But do not imagine that you can increase your strength
by increasing your powers. Not so; if your pride increases more
rapidly your strength is diminished. Let us measure the extent of
our sphere and remain in its centre like the spider in its web;
we shall have strength sufficient for our needs, we shall have no
cause to lament our weakness, for we shall never be aware of it.

The other animals possess only such powers as are required for
self-preservation; man alone has more. Is it not very strange that
this superfluity should make him miserable? In every land a man's
labour yields more than a bare living. If he were wise enough to
disregard this surplus he would always have enough, for he would
never have too much. "Great needs," said Favorin, "spring from
great wealth; and often the best way of getting what we want is
to get rid of what we have." By striving to increase our happiness
we change it into wretchedness. If a man were content to live, he
would live happy; and he would therefore be good, for what would
he have to gain by vice?

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 here below, who would
accept the sorrowful gift? [Footnote: You understand I am speaking
of those who think, and not of the crowd.] What resources, what
hopes, what consolation would be left against the cruelties of
fate and man's injustice? The ignorant man never looks before; he
knows little of the value of life and does not fear to lose it;
the wise man sees things of greater worth and prefers them to it.
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 did we not know that
sooner or later death will end it.

Our moral ills are the result of prejudice, crime alone excepted,
and that depends on ourselves; our bodily ills either put an end
to themselves or to us. Time or death will cure them, but the less
we know how to bear it, the greater is our pain, and we suffer more
in our efforts to cure our diseases than 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.

Human institutions are one mass of folly and contradiction. As our
life loses its value we set a higher price upon it. The old 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 a murmur. When this natural law
is overthrown reason establishes another, but few discern it, and
man's resignation is never so complete as nature's.

Prudence! Prudence which is ever bidding us look forward into the
future, a future which in many cases we shall never reach; here is
the real source of all our troubles! How mad it is for so short-lived
a creature as man to look forward into a future to which he rarely
attains, while he neglects the present which is his? This madness
is all the more fatal since it increases with years, and the old,
always timid, prudent, and miserly, prefer to do without necessaries
to-day that they may have luxuries at a hundred. Thus we grasp
everything, we cling to everything; we are anxious about time,
place, people, things, all that is and will be; we ourselves are
but the least part of ourselves. We spread ourselves, so to speak,
over the whole world, and all this vast expanse becomes sensitive.
No wonder our woes increase when we may be wounded on every side.
How many princes make themselves miserable for the loss of lands
they never saw, and how many merchants lament in Paris over some
misfortune in the Indies!

Is it nature that carries men so far from their real selves? Is it
her will that each should learn his fate from others and even be
the last to learn it; so that a man dies happy or miserable before
he knows what he is about. There is a healthy, cheerful, strong,
and vigorous man; it does me good to see him; his eyes tell of
content and well-being; he is the picture of happiness. A letter
comes by post; the happy man glances at it, it is addressed to him,
he opens it and reads it. In a moment he is changed, he turns pale
and falls into a swoon. When he comes to himself he weeps, laments,
and groans, he tears his hair, and his shrieks re-echo through the
air. 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 change has it wrought in you to reduce
you to this state of misery?

Had the letter miscarried, had some kindly hand thrown it into the
fire, it strikes 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 live in our own
place, we live outside it. What does it profit us to live in such
fear of death, when all that makes life worth living is our own?

Oh, man! live your own life and you will no longer be wretched.
Keep to your appointed place in the order of nature and nothing can
tear you from it. Do not kick against the stern law of necessity,
nor waste in vain resistance the strength bestowed on you by heaven,
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
but slavery, deceit, and trickery. Power itself is servile when it
depends upon public opinion; for you are dependent on the prejudices
of others when you rule them by means of those prejudices. To lead
them as you will, they must be led as they will. 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. Had you the
genius of Themistocles, [Footnote: "You see that little boy," said
Themistocles to his friends, "the fate of Greece is in his hands,
for he rules his mother and his mother rules me, I rule the Athenians
and the Athenians rule the Greeks." What petty creatures we should
often find controlling great empires if we traced the course of power
from the prince to those who secretly put that power in motion.]
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 powers. As soon as you are obliged to
see with another's eyes you must will what he wills. You 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; set up your batteries, 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 it do you? You will be no better served, you will be
none the less robbed and deceived, you will be no nearer absolute
power. You will say continually, "It is our will," and you will
continually do the will of others.

There is only one man who gets his own way--he who can get it
single-handed; therefore freedom, not power, is the greatest good.
That man is truly free who desires what he is able to perform, and
does what he desires. This is my fundamental maxim. Apply it to
childhood, and all the rules of education spring from it.

Society has enfeebled man, not merely by robbing him of the right
to his own strength, but still more by making his strength insufficient
for his needs. This is why his desires increase in proportion to
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 desires and the child more
caprices, a word which means, I take it, desires which are not true
needs, desires which can only be satisfied with the help of others.

I have already given the reason for this state of weakness. Parental
affection is nature's provision against it; but parental affection
may be carried to excess, it may be wanting, or it may be ill applied.
Parents who live under our ordinary social conditions bring their
child into these conditions too soon. By increasing his needs they
do not relieve his weakness; they rather increase it. They further
increase it by demanding of him what nature does not demand, by
subjecting to their will what little strength he has to further
his own wishes, by making slaves of themselves or of him instead
of recognising that mutual dependence which should result from his
weakness or their affection.

The wise man can keep his own place; but the child who does not
know what his place is, is unable to keep it. There are a thousand
ways out of it, and 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 a child. He must feel his
weakness, but not suffer through 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 he really needs, what may help or hinder his existence. No
one, not even his father, has the right to bid the child do what
is of no use to him.

When our natural tendencies have not been interfered with by human
prejudice and human institutions, the happiness alike of children
and of men consists in the enjoyment of their liberty. But the
child's liberty is restricted by his lack of strength. He who does
as he likes is happy provided he is self-sufficing; it is so with
the man who is 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 like conditions. Even in a state of nature children
only enjoy an imperfect liberty, like that enjoyed by men in social
life. Each of us, unable to dispense with the help of others,
becomes so far weak and wretched. We were meant to be men, laws and
customs thrust us back into infancy. The rich and great, the very
kings themselves are but children; they see that we are ready to
relieve their misery; this makes them childishly vain, and they are
quite proud of the care bestowed on them, a care which they would
never get if they were grown men.

These are weighty considerations, and they provide a solution
for all the conflicting problems of our social system. There are
two kinds of dependence: dependence on things, which is the work
of nature; and dependence on men, which is the work of society.
Dependence on things, being non-moral, does no injury to liberty and
begets no vices; dependence on men, being out of order, [Footnote:
In my PRINCIPLES OF POLITICAL LAW it is proved that no private will
can be ordered in the social system.] gives rise to every kind of
vice, and through this master and slave become mutually depraved.
If there is any cure for this social evil, it is to be found in
the substitution of law for the individual; in arming the general
will with a real strength beyond the power of any individual will.
If the laws of nations, like the laws of nature, could never be
broken by any human power, dependence on men would become dependence
on things; all the advantages of a state of nature would be combined
with all the advantages of social life in the commonwealth. The
liberty which preserves a man from vice would be united with the
morality which raises him to virtue.

Keep the child dependent on things only. By this course of education
you will have followed the order of nature. Let his unreasonable
wishes meet with physical obstacles only, or the punishment which
results from his own actions, lessons which will be recalled when
the same circumstances occur again. It is enough to prevent him
from wrong doing without forbidding him to do wrong. Experience or
lack of power should take the place of law. Give him, not what he
wants, but what he needs. Let there be no question of obedience for
him or tyranny for you. Supply the strength he lacks just so far
as is required for freedom, not for power, so that he may receive
your services with a sort of shame, and look forward to the time when
he may dispense with them and may achieve the honour of self-help.

Nature provides for the child's growth in her own fashion, and this
should never be thwarted. Do not make him sit still when he wants
to run about, nor run when he wants to be quiet. If we did not
spoil our children's wills by our blunders their desires would be
free from caprice. Let them run, jump, and shout to their heart's
content. All their own activities are instincts of the body for
its growth in strength; but you should regard with suspicion those
wishes which they cannot carry out for themselves, those which
others must carry out for them. Then you must distinguish carefully
between natural and artificial needs, between the needs of budding
caprice and the needs which spring from the overflowing life just
described.

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
importunity than your own good-will. If he does not think you kind
he will soon think you unkind; if he thinks you weak he will soon
become obstinate; what you mean to give must be given at once. Be
chary of refusing, but, having refused, do not change your mind.

Above all, beware of teaching the child empty phrases of politeness,
which serve as spells 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. You see
at once that "If you please" means "It pleases me," and "I beg"
means "I command." What a fine sort of 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 haughty, that
he should say "Do this" as a request, rather than "Please" as a
command. What concerns me is his meaning, not his words.

There is such a thing as excessive severity as well as excessive
indulgence, and both alike should be avoided. If you let children
suffer you risk their health and life; you make them miserable now;
if you take too much pains to spare them every kind of uneasiness
you are laying up much misery 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.

Not so; for the liberty I give my pupil makes up for the slight
hardships to which he is exposed. I see little fellows playing in
the snow, stiff and blue with cold, scarcely able to stir a finger.
They could go and warm themselves if they chose, but they do not
choose; if you forced them to come in they would feel the harshness
of constraint a hundredfold more than the sharpness of the cold. Then
what becomes of your grievance? Shall I make your child miserable
by exposing him to hardships which he is perfectly ready to endure? I
secure his present good by leaving him his freedom, and his future
good by arming him against the evils he will have to bear. If he
had his choice, would he hesitate for a moment between you and me?

Do you think any man can find true happiness elsewhere than in his
natural state; and when you try to spare him all suffering, are you
not taking him out of his natural state? Indeed I maintain that to
enjoy great happiness he must experience slight ills; such is his
nature. Too much bodily prosperity corrupts the morals. A man who
knew nothing of suffering would be incapable of tenderness towards
his fellow-creatures and ignorant of the joys of pity; he would be
hard-hearted, unsocial, a very monster among men.

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. He will
want your stick first, then your watch, the bird that flies, or
the star that shines above him. He will want all he sets eyes on,
and unless you were God himself, how could you satisfy him?

Man naturally considers all that he can get as his own. In this
sense Hobbes' theory is true to a certain extent: Multiply both our
wishes and the means of satisfying them, and each will be master of
all. Thus the child, who has only to ask and have, thinks himself
the master of the universe; he considers all men as his slaves;
and when you are at last compelled to refuse, he takes your refusal
as an act of rebellion, for he thinks he has only to command. All
the reasons you give him, while he is still too young to reason,
are so many pretences in his eyes; they seem to him only unkindness;
the sense of injustice embitters his disposition; he hates every
one. Though he has never felt grateful for kindness, he resents
all opposition.

How should I suppose that such a child can ever be happy? He is
the slave of anger, a prey to the fiercest passions. Happy! He is
a tyrant, at once the basest of slaves and the most wretched of
creatures. I have known children brought up like this who expected
you to knock the house down, to give them the weather-cock on the
steeple, to stop a regiment on the march so that they might listen
to the band; when they could not get their way they screamed and
cried and would pay no attention to any one. In vain everybody strove
to please them; as 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. Scolding, sulking, or in a rage, they wept and cried
all day. Were they really so greatly favoured? Weakness, combined
with love of power, produces nothing but folly and suffering. One
spoilt child beats the table; another whips the sea. They may beat
and whip long enough before they find contentment.

If their childhood is made wretched by these notions of power and
tyranny, what of their manhood, when their relations with their
fellow-men begin to grow and multiply? They are used to find 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. 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. As they cannot 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.

Let us come back to the primitive law. Nature has made children
helpless and in need of affection; did she make them to be obeyed
and feared? Has she given them an imposing manner, a stern eye, a
loud and threatening voice with which to make themselves feared?
I understand how the roaring of the lion strikes terror into 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 body of statesmen in their robes of office
with their chief at their head bowing down before a swaddled babe,
addressing him in pompous phrases, while he cries and slavers in
reply?

If we consider childhood itself, is there anything so weak and
wretched as a child, anything so utterly at the mercy of those about
it, so dependent on their pity, their care, and their affection?
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 unsuitable, than the sight of a sulky or imperious child,
who commands those about him, and impudently assumes the tones of
a master towards those without whom he would perish?

On the other hand, do you not see how children are fettered by the
weakness of infancy? Do you not see how cruel it is to increase
this servitude by obedience to our caprices, by depriving them of
such liberty as they have? a liberty which they can scarcely abuse,
a liberty 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. With the age
of reason the child becomes the slave of the community; then why
forestall this by slavery in the home? Let this brief hour of life
be free from a yoke which nature has not laid upon it; leave the
child the use of his natural liberty, which, for a time at least,
secures him from the vices of the slave. Bring me those harsh
masters, and those fathers who are the slaves of their children,
bring them both with their frivolous objections, and before they
boast of their own methods let them for once learn the method of
nature.

I return to practical matters. I have already said your child
must not get what he asks, but what he needs; [Footnote: We must
recognise that pain is often necessary, pleasure is sometimes needed.
So there is only one of the child's desires which should never be
complied with, the desire for power. Hence, whenever they ask for
anything we must pay special attention to their motive in asking.
As far as possible give them everything they ask for, provided it
can really give them pleasure; refuse everything they demand from
mere caprice or love of power.] he must never act from obedience,
but from necessity.

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; so avoid, as far as may be, 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 pay no heed to you at all, or he will form fantastic
ideas of the moral world of which you prate, ideas which you will
never efface as long as he lives.

"Reason with children" was Locke's chief maxim; it is in the height
of fashion at present, and I hardly think it is justified by its
results; those children who have been constantly reasoned with
strike me as exceedingly silly. Of all man's faculties, reason,
which is, so to speak, compounded of all the rest, is the last
and choicest growth, and it is this you would use for the child's
early training. To make a man reasonable is the coping stone of a
good education, and yet you profess to train a child through his
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 be satisfied with words, to
question all that is said to them, to think themselves as wise as
their teachers; you train them to be argumentative and rebellious;
and whatever you think you gain from motives of reason, you really
gain from greediness, fear, or vanity with which you are obliged
to reinforce your reasoning.

Most of the moral lessons which are and can be given to children
may be reduced to this formula; 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 disobedience.

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

Master. We shall watch you.

Child. I will hide.

Master. We shall ask you what you were doing.

Child. I shall tell a lie.

Master. You must not tell lies.

Child. Why must not I tell lies?

Master. Because it is wrong, etc.

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.

Nature would have them children before they are men. If we try
to invert this order we shall produce a forced fruit immature and
flavourless, fruit which will be rotten before it is ripe; we shall
have young doctors and old children. Childhood has its own ways
of seeing, thinking, and feeling; nothing is more foolish than to
try and substitute our ways; and I should no more expect judgment
in a ten-year-old child than I should expect him to be five feet
high. Indeed, what use would reason be to him at that age? It is
the curb of strength, and the child does not need the curb.

When you try to persuade your scholars of the duty of obedience, you
add to this so-called persuasion compulsion and threats, or still
worse, flattery and bribes. Attracted by selfishness or constrained
by force, they pretend to be convinced by reason. They see as soon
as you do that obedience is to their advantage and disobedience to
their disadvantage. But as you only demand disagreeable things of
them, and as it is always disagreeable to do another's will, they
hide themselves so that they may do as they please, persuaded that
they are doing no wrong so long as they are not found out, but
ready, if found out, to own themselves in the wrong for fear of
worse evils. The reason for duty is beyond their age, and 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.

What does it all come to? In the first place, by imposing on them
a duty which they fail to recognise, you make them disinclined to
submit to your tyranny, and you turn away their love; you teach
them deceit, falsehood, and lying as a way to gain rewards or escape
punishment; then by accustoming them to conceal a secret motive
under the cloak of an apparent one, you yourself put into their
hands the means of deceiving you, of depriving you of a knowledge
of their real character, 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-up men. That
is so, but what are these men but children spoilt by education?
This is just what you should avoid. Use force with children and
reasoning with men; this is the natural order; the wise man needs
no laws.

Treat your scholar according to his age. Put him in his place from
the first, and keep him in it, so that he no longer tries to leave
it. Then before he knows what goodness is, he will be practising
its chief lesson. Give him no orders at all, absolutely none. Do
not even let him think that you claim any authority over him. Let
him only know that he is weak and you are strong, that his condition
and yours puts him at your mercy; let this be perceived, learned,
and felt. Let him early find upon his proud neck, the heavy yoke
which nature has imposed upon us, the heavy yoke of necessity, under
which every finite being must bow. Let him find this necessity in
things, not in the caprices [Footnote: You may be sure the child
will regard as caprice any will which opposes his own or any will
which he does not understand. Now the child does not understand
anything which interferes with his own fancies.] of man; let
the curb 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 give him, give it at his first word without
prayers or entreaties, above all without conditions. Give willingly,
refuse unwillingly, but let your refusal be irrevocable; let
no entreaties move you; let your "No," once uttered, be a wall of
brass, against which the child may exhaust his strength some five
or six times, but in the end he will try no more to overthrow it.

Thus you will make him patient, equable, calm, and resigned, even
when he does not get all he wants; for it is in man's nature to bear
patiently with the nature of things, but not with the ill-will of
another. 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.

It is very strange that ever since people began to think about
education they should have hit upon no other way of guiding children
than emulation, jealousy, envy, vanity, greediness, base cowardice,
all the most dangerous passions, passions ever ready to ferment,
ever prepared to corrupt the soul even before the body is full-grown.
With every piece of precocious instruction which you try to force
into their minds you plant a vice in the depths of their hearts;
foolish teachers think they are doing wonders when they are making
their scholars wicked in order to teach them what goodness is, and
then they tell us seriously, "Such is man." Yes, such is man, as
you have made him. Every means has been tried except one, the very
one which might succeed--well-regulated liberty. Do not undertake
to bring up a child if you cannot guide him merely by the laws of
what can or cannot be. The limits of the possible and the impossible
are alike unknown to him, so they can be extended or contracted
around him at your will. Without a murmur he is restrained, urged
on, held back, by the hands of necessity alone; he is made adaptable
and teachable by the mere force of things, without any chance for
vice to spring up in him; for passions do not arise so long as they
have accomplished nothing.

Give your scholar no verbal lessons; he should be taught by
experience alone; never punish him, for he does not know what it
is to do wrong; never make him say, "Forgive me," for he does not
know how to do you wrong. Wholly unmoral in his actions, he can
do nothing morally wrong, and he deserves neither punishment nor
reproof.

Already I see the frightened reader comparing this child with those
of our time; he is mistaken. The perpetual restraint imposed upon
your scholars stimulates their activity; the more subdued they are
in your presence, the more boisterous they are as soon as they are
out of your sight. They must make amends to themselves in some way
or other for the harsh constraint to which you subject them. Two
schoolboys from the town 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
that, unless that the one hastens to misuse 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.

Let us lay it down as an incontrovertible rule that the first
impulses of nature are always right; there is no original sin in
the human heart, the how and why of the entrance of every vice can
be traced. The only natural passion is self-love or selfishness
taken in a wider sense. This selfishness is good in itself and in
relation to ourselves; and as the child has no necessary relations
to other people he is naturally indifferent to them; his self-love
only becomes good or bad by the use made of it and the relations
established by its means. Until the time is ripe for the appearance
of reason, that guide of selfishness, the main thing is that the
child shall 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 never do wrong.

I do not mean to say that he will never do any mischief, never hurt
himself, never break a costly ornament 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 be ruined; he would
be almost hopelessly bad.

Greed considers some things wrong which are not wrong in the eyes
of reason. When you leave free scope to a child's heedlessness, you
must put anything he could spoil out of his way, and leave nothing
fragile or costly within his reach. Let the room be furnished with
plain and solid furniture; no mirrors, china, or useless ornaments.
My pupil Emile, who is brought up in the country, shall have a
room just like a peasant's. Why take such pains to adorn it when he
will be so little in it? I am mistaken, however; he will ornament
it for himself, and we shall soon see how.

But if, in spite of your precautions, the child contrives 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 reproval, do not even let him see that he has vexed you; behave
just as if the thing had come to pieces of itself; you may consider
you have done great things if you have managed to hold your tongue.

May I venture at this point to state the greatest, the most
important, the most useful rule of education? It is: Do not save
time, but lose it. I hope that every-day readers will excuse my
paradoxes; you cannot avoid paradox if you think for yourself, and
whatever you may say I would rather fall into paradox than into
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, while as yet there is no means to destroy them; when
the means of destruction are ready, the roots have gone too deep to
be pulled up. If the infant sprang at one bound from its mother's
breast to the age of reason, the present type of education would be
quite suitable, but its natural growth calls for quite a different
training. The mind should be left undisturbed till its faculties
have developed; 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.

Therefore the education of the earliest years should be merely
negative. It consists, not in teaching virtue or truth, but in
preserving the heart from vice and from the spirit of error. If only
you could let well alone, and get others to follow your example;
if you could bring your scholar to the age of twelve strong and
healthy, but unable to tell his right hand from his left, the eyes
of his understanding would be open to reason as soon as you began
to teach him. Free from prejudices and free from 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.

Reverse the usual practice and you will almost always do right.
Fathers and teachers who want to make the child, not a child
but a man of learning, think it never too soon to scold, correct,
reprove, threaten, bribe, teach, and reason. Do better than they;
be reasonable, and do not reason with your pupil, more especially
do not try to make him approve 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 well, for goodness is only
possible when enlightened by reason. Regard all delays as so much
time gained; you have achieved much, you approach the boundary
without loss. Leave childhood to ripen in your children. In a word,
beware of giving anything they need to-day if it can be deferred
without danger to to-morrow.

There is another point to be considered which confirms the suitability
of this method: it is the child's individual bent, which must be
thoroughly known before we can choose the fittest moral training.
Every mind has its own form, in accordance with which it must be
controlled; and the success of the pains taken depends largely on
the fact that he is controlled in this way and no other. Oh, wise
man, take time to observe nature; watch your scholar 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?
On the contrary, your scholar 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 at random; you may make mistakes, and
must retrace your steps; your haste to reach your goal will only
take you further from it. Do not imitate the miser who loses much
lest he should lose a little. Sacrifice a little time in early
childhood, and it will be repaid you with usury when your scholar
is older. The wise physician does not hastily give prescriptions
at first sight, but he studies the constitution of the sick man
before he prescribes anything; the treatment is begun later, but
the patient is cured, while the hasty doctor kills him.

But where shall we find a place for our child so as to bring him
up as a senseless being, an automaton? Shall we keep him in the
moon, or on a desert island? Shall we remove him from human society?
Will he not always have around him the sight and the pattern 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 man-servant, his tutor himself, who after all
will not be an angel? Here we have a real and serious objection.
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 all good
things difficult? I admit that I am aware of these difficulties;
perhaps they are insuperable; but nevertheless it is certain that
we do to some extent avoid them by trying to do so. I am showing
what we should try to attain, I do not say we can attain it, but
I do say that whoever comes nearest to it is nearest to success.

Remember you must be a man yourself before you try to train a man;
you yourself must set the pattern he shall copy. While the child
is still unconscious there is time to prepare his surroundings, so
that nothing shall strike his eye but what is fit for his sight.
Gain the respect of every one, begin to win their hearts, so that
they may try to please you. You will not be master of the child
if you cannot control every one about him; and this authority will
never suffice unless it rests upon respect for your goodness. There
is no question of squandering one's means and giving money right
and left; I never knew money win love. You must neither be harsh
nor niggardly, nor must you merely pity misery when you can relieve
it; but in vain will you open your purse if you do not open your
heart along with it, the hearts of others will always be closed to
you. You must give your own time, attention, affection, your very
self; 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 charity; how
many of the oppressed need protection rather than money? Reconcile
those who are at strife, 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
strong. Be just, human, kindly. Do not give alms alone, give charity;
works of mercy do more than money for the relief of suffering; love
others and they will love you; serve them and they will serve you;
be their brother and they will be your children.

This is one reason why I want to bring up Emile in the country,
far from those miserable lacqueys, the most degraded of men except
their masters; far from the vile morals of the town, whose gilded
surface makes them seductive and contagious to children; while
the vices of peasants, unadorned and in their naked grossness, are
more fitted to repel than to seduce, when there is no motive for
imitating them.

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 town; he is of
use to every one, so every one is eager to oblige him, to win his
esteem, to appeal before the disciple what the master would have him
be; if vice is not corrected, public scandal is at least avoided,
which is all that our present purpose requires.

Cease to blame others for your own faults; children are corrupted
less by what they see than by your own teaching. With your endless
preaching, moralising, and pedantry, for one idea you give your
scholars, 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
minds, 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?

Listen to a little fellow who has just been under instruction; 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
topsy-turvy; you are vexed and grieved 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.

Zealous teachers, be simple, sensible, 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.

The explosive passions produce a great effect upon the child
when he sees them; their outward expression is very marked; he is
struck by this and his attention is arrested. Anger especially is
so noisy in its rage that it is impossible not to perceive it if
you are within reach. You need not ask yourself whether this is an
opportunity for a pedagogue to frame a fine disquisition. What! no
fine disquisition, nothing, not a word! Let the child come to you;
impressed by what he has seen, he will not fail to ask you questions.
The answer is easy; 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. By means of this idea, which is not false
in itself, may he not early 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? 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 dear, you have hurt me."

Moreover, it is a matter of great importance that no notice should
be 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 he 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.

I do not propose to enter into every detail, but only to explain
general rules and to give illustrations in cases of difficulty. I
think it is impossible to train 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 delay the development of these ideas as long
as possible, and when they can no longer be avoided 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.

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.

If I had to train a child such as I have just described, I should
say to myself, "A child never attacks people, [Footnote: A child
should never be allowed to play with grown-up people as if they
were his inferiors, nor even as if they were only his equals. If
he ventured to strike any one in earnest, were it only the footman,
were it the hangman himself, let the sufferer return his blows with
interest, so that he will not want to do it again. I have seen
silly women inciting children to rebellion, encouraging them to
hit people, allowing themselves to be beaten, and laughing at the
harmless blows, never thinking that those blows were in intention
the blows of a murderer, and that the child who desires to beat
people now will desire to kill them when he is grown up.] only
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 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. [Footnote: This is why most children want to take
back what they have given, and cry if they cannot get it. They do
not do this when once they know what a gift is; only they are more
careful about giving things away.]

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 got 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 hardly have
seen the gardener at work twice, sowing, planting, and growing
vegetables, before he will want to garden himself.

According to the principles I have already laid down, I shall not
thwart him; on the contrary, I shall approve of his plan, share
his hobby, 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 Nunes 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.

We water the beans every day, we watch them coming up with the
greatest delight. Day by day 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 a part of himself
which he can claim against all the world, as he could withdraw his
arm from the hand of another man who wanted to keep it against his
will.

One fine day he hurries up with his watering-can in his hand. What
a scene of woe! Alas! all the beans are pulled up, the soil is dug
over, you can scarcely find the place. Oh! what has become of my
labour, my work, the beloved fruits of my care and effort? 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 unhappy child fills the air with cries
and groans, 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.

But we are greatly mistaken. The gardener, hearing our complaint,
begins to complain louder than we:

What, gentlemen, was it you who spoilt my work! I had sown some
Maltese melons; the seed was given me as something quite out of
the common, and I meant to give you a treat when they were ripe;
but you have planted your miserable beans and destroyed my melons,
which were coming up so nicely, and I can never get any more. You
have behaved very badly to me and you have deprived yourselves of
the pleasure of eating most delicious melons.

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 been beforehand with us.

ROBERT. Well, gentlemen, you need not trouble yourselves, for
there is no more waste ground. I dig what my father tilled; every
one does the same, and all the land you see has been occupied time
out of mind.

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

ROBERT. No indeed, sir; we do not often find such silly little
gentlemen as you. No one meddles with his neighbour's garden; every
one respects other people's work so that his own may be safe.

EMILE. But I have not got a garden.

ROBERT. I don't care; if you spoil mine I won't let you walk in
it, for you see I do not mean to lose my labour.

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.

In this attempt to show how a child may be taught certain primitive
ideas we see how the notion of property goes back naturally to the
right of the first occupier to the results of his work. 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.

You also see that an explanation which I can give in writing in a
couple of pages 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 teacher, pray consider this example, and remember
that your lessons should always be in deeds rather than words, 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.

Such teaching should be given, as I have said, sooner or later, as
the scholar's disposition, gentle or turbulent, 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.

Your ill-tempered child destroys everything he touches. Do not vex
yourself; put anything he can spoil out of his reach. He breaks
the things he is using; do not be in a hurry to give him more; let
him feel the want 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 reckless.
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
dryly 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 heeds. Soon he gets tired and changes
his tone; he laments and sighs; 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 keep," 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 utterly spoilt 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
hewing out a cell in which his own knowledge would soon imprison
him. [Footnote: Moreover if the duty of keeping his word were not
established in the child's mind by its own utility, the child's growing
consciousness would soon impress it on him as a law of conscience,
as an innate principle, only requiring suitable experiences for
its development. This first outline is not sketched by man, it is
engraved on the heart by the author of all justice. Take away the
primitive law of contract and the obligation imposed by contract
and there is nothing left of human society but vanity and empty
show. He who only keeps his word because it is to his own profit
is hardly more pledged than if he had given no promise at all. This
principle is of the utmost importance, and deserves to be thoroughly
studied, for man is now beginning to be at war with himself.]

We are now in the world of morals, the door to vice is open. Deceit
and falsehood are born along with conventions and duties. 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 interest may make us break it; it is merely a question
of doing it with impunity; we naturally take refuge in concealment
and falsehood. As we have not been able to prevent vice, we must
punish it. The sorrows of life begin with its mistakes.

I have already said enough to show that children should never receive
punishment merely as such; it should always come as the natural
consequence of their fault. Thus you will not exclaim against
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 we speak the truth, or being accused of what we
have not done in spite of our protests, shall fall on their heads
when they have told a lie. But let us explain what lying means to
the child.

There are two kinds of lies; one concerns an accomplished fact,
the other concerns a future duty. The first occurs when we falsely
deny or assert that we did or did not do something, or, to put it
in general terms, when we knowingly say what is contrary to facts.
The other occurs when we promise what we do not mean to perform,
or, in general terms, when we profess an intention which we do
not really mean to carry out. These two kinds of lie are sometimes
found in combination, [Footnote: Thus the guilty person, accused
of some evil deed, defends himself by asserting that he is a good
man. His statement is false in itself and false in its application to
the matter in hand.] but their differences are my present business.

He who feels the need of help from others, he who is constantly
experiencing their kindness, has nothing to gain by deceiving them;
it is plainly to his advantage 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 remoter good of speaking the truth. Under a free and natural
education why should your child lie? What has he to conceal 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 simply as to
his little playmate? He cannot see anything more risky in the one
course than in the other.

The lie concerning duty is even less natural, since promises to do
or refrain from doing are conventional agreements which are outside
the state of nature and detract from our liberty. Moreover, all
promises made by children are in themselves void; when they pledge
themselves they do not know what they are doing, for their narrow
vision cannot look beyond the present. 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 him
into the future while he lives in the present. If he could escape
a whipping or get a packet of sweets 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 teachers are stricter and demand that promises shall
be kept, it is only when the promise refers to something the child
ought to do even if he had made no promise.

The child cannot lie when he makes a promise, for he does not know
what he is doing when he makes his promise. The case is different
when he breaks his promise, which is a sort of retrospective falsehood;
for he clearly remembers making the promise, but he fails to see
the importance of keeping it. Unable to look into the future, he
cannot foresee the results of things, and when he breaks his promises
he does nothing contrary to his stage of reasoning.

Children's lies are therefore 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 zeal 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.

We, who only give our scholars lessons in practice, who prefer to
have them good rather than clever, never demand the truth lest they
should conceal it, and never claim any promise lest they should be
tempted to break it. If some mischief has been done in my absence
and I do not know who did it, I shall take care not to accuse
Emile, nor to say, "Did you do it?" [Footnote: Nothing could be more
indiscreet than such a question, especially if the child is guilty.
Then if he thinks you know what he has done, he will think you are
setting a trap for him, and this idea can only set him against you.
If he thinks you do not know, he will say to himself, "Why should
I make my fault known?" And here we have the first temptation to
falsehood as the direct result of your foolish question.] 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 is it to his interest
to lie.

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 spoilt. 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 neglects, forgets or even scorns them, and considering
them as so many empty phrases he makes a game of making and breaking
promises. Would you have him keep his promise faithfully, be
moderate in your claims upon him.

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.
For the sake of a show of preaching virtue you make them love every
vice; you instil these vices by forbidding them. Would you have
them pious, you take them to church till they are sick of it; you
teach them to gabble prayers until they long for the happy time
when they will not have to pray 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 master, 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
deed 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 we are grown up.

Observe that the only things children are set to give are things
of which they do not know the value, 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 sweets, his own
lunch, and we shall soon see if you have made him really generous.

People try yet another way; they soon restore what he gave to the
child, so that he gets used to giving everything which he knows
will come back to him. I have scarcely 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 expects
cent. per cent. 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. What
a sensible sort of education!

Teachers, have done with these shams; be good and kind; let your
example sink into your scholars' memories till they are old enough
to take it to heart. Rather than hasten to demand deeds of charity
from my pupil I prefer to perform such deeds 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, [Footnote: It must be understood that I do not answer
his questions when he wants; that would be to subject myself to his
will and to place myself in the most dangerous state of dependence
that ever a tutor was in.] I shall say, "My dear boy, 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."

After 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 to give. It is a fraud suitable
to his age, and the only one I could forgive in him.

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 deeds
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 the beasts.
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 beasts, 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
might arise from it.

Examine your rules of education; you will find them all topsy-turvy,
especially in all that concerns virtue and morals. The only moral
lesson which is suited for a child--the most important lesson for
every time of life--is this: "Never hurt anybody." The very rule of
well-doing, if not subordinated to this rule, is dangerous, false,
and contradictory. Who is there who does no good? Every one 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 noblest virtues are negative, they are also the
most difficult, for they make little show, and do not even make
room for 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 it needs! It is not in talking
about this maxim, but in trying to practise it, that we discover
both its greatness and its difficulty. [Footnote: The precept
"Never hurt anybody," implies the greatest possible independence
of human society; for in the social state one man's good is another
man's evil. This relation is part of the nature of things; it is
inevitable. You may apply this test to man in society and to the
hermit to discover which is best. A distinguished author says, "None
but the wicked can live alone." I say, "None but the good can live
alone." This proposition, if less sententious, is truer and more
logical than the other. If the wicked were alone, what evil would
he do? It is among his fellows that he lays his snares for others.
If they wish to apply this argument to the man of property, my
answer is to be found in the passage to which this note is appended.]

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
the oftener children have the opportunity of quitting their proper
condition, and contracting the vices of men, the oftener will
these exceptions arise. Those who are brought up in the world must
receive more precocious instruction than those who are brought up
in retirement. So this solitary education would be preferable, even
if it did nothing more than leave childhood time to ripen.

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;
while every mother, who knows that a child may be a prodigy,
is convinced that her child is that 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 a child indeed. Is it 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 Providence watch over those
fine folk who have no other claim to social distinction.

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 that 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.

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.

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 between genuine stupidity, and that apparent
and deceitful 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 genius and the rest 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 Caesar 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 apt to be mistaken; they are often more childish than
the child himself. I knew a middle-aged man, [Footnote: The Abbe de
Condillac] 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 day.

Hold childhood in reverence, and do not be in any hurry to judge
it for good or ill. Leave exceptional cases to show themselves,
let their qualities be tested and confirmed, before special methods
are adopted. Give nature time to work before you take over her
business, lest you interfere with her dealings. You assert 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 ill than
to do nothing, and that a child ill taught is further from virtue
than a child who has learnt nothing at all. You are afraid 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 all his life long. Plato, in his Republic, which is
considered so stern, 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 lads in olden days, 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 lest he should waste part of his life? You would
say, "He is mad; he is not enjoying his life, he is robbing himself
of part of it; to avoid sleep he is hastening his death." Remember
that these two cases are alike, and that childhood is the sleep of
reason.

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, as in a mirror, the things
you show them, but nothing sinks in. The child remembers the words
and the ideas are reflected back; his hearers understand them, but
to him they are meaningless.

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 we image
we merely perceive, when we reason we compare. Our sensations are
merely passive, our notions or ideas spring from an active principle
which judges. The proof of this will be given later.

I maintain, therefore, that as children are incapable of judging,
they have no true memory. They retain sounds, form, sensation, but
rarely ideas, and still more rarely relations. 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.

I am far from thinking, however, that children have no sort of reason.
[Footnote: I have noticed again and again that it is impossible
in writing a lengthy work to use the same words always in the
same sense. There is no language rich enough to supply terms and
expressions sufficient for the modifications of our ideas. The method
of defining every term and constantly substituting the definition
for the term defined looks well, but it is impracticable. For how
can we escape from our vicious circle? Definitions would be all
very well if we did not use words in the making of them. In spite
of this I am convinced that even in our poor language we can make
our meaning clear, not by always using words in the same sense,
but by taking care hat every time we use a word the sense in which
we use it is sufficiently indicated by the sense of the context,
so that each sentence in which the word occurs acts as a sort of
definition. Sometimes I say children are incapable of reasoning.
Sometimes I say they reason cleverly. I must admit that my words are
often contradictory, but I do not think there is any contradiction
in my ideas.] 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 wretches are directed towards matters
utterly remote from their minds. You may judge how much attention
they can give to them.

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!
words! 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 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.

You will be surprised to find that I reckon the study of languages
among the useless lumber 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.

If the study of languages were merely the study of words, that is,
of the symbols by which language expresses itself, then this might
be a suitable study for children; but languages, as they change
the symbols, also modify the ideas which the symbols express. Minds
are formed by language, thoughts take their colour from its ideas.
Reason alone is common to all. Every language has its own form, a
difference which may be partly cause and partly effect of differences
in national character; this conjecture appears to be confirmed
by the fact that in every nation under the sun speech follows the
changes of manners, and is preserved or altered along with them.

By use the child acquires one of these different forms, and it is
the only language he retains till the age of reason. To acquire
two languages he must be able to compare their ideas, and how can
he compare ideas he can barely understand? Everything may have
a thousand meanings to him, 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; it
is not their language but their words that you change; they will
never have but one language.

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 their
primer 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?

In any study whatsoever the symbols are of no value without the
idea of the things symbolised. Yet the education of the child in
confined to those symbols, while no one ever succeeds in making
him understand the thing signified. You think you are teaching him
what the world is like; he is only learning the map; 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 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 about the paths on his
father's estate without getting lost. These are the young doctors
who can tell us the position of Pekin, Ispahan, Mexico, and every
country in the world.

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.

It is a still more ridiculous error to set them to study history,
which is considered 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 and effects,
and that history has so little relation to words that the one can
be learnt without the other? If you perceive nothing in a man's
actions beyond merely physical and external movements, what do you
learn from history? Absolutely nothing; while this study, robbed
of all that makes it interesting, gives you neither pleasure nor
information. If you want to judge actions by their moral bearings,
try to make these moral bearings intelligible to your scholars.
You will soon find out if they are old enough to learn history.

Remember, reader, that he who speaks to you is neither a scholar
nor a philosopher, but a plain man and a lover of truth; a man who
is pledged to no one party or system, a hermit, who mixes little with
other men, and has less opportunity of imbibing their prejudices,
and more time to reflect on the things that strike him in his
intercourse with them. My arguments are based less on theories 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 suggested my arguments.

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 eldest boy had his
lessons. His tutor, who had taken great pains to teach him ancient
history, began upon the story of Alexander and lighted on 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 get the little
fellow talking, French fashion. The eager spirit 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 prettily. After the usual meed 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," said she, "say no more,
they will never understand you." I looked at her, I recognised the
wisdom of her advice, and I held my tongue.

Several things made me suspect that our young professor had not in
the least understood the story he told so prettily. 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 at a single draught without hesitation and
without any signs of dislike. Not a fortnight 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 death by
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.

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.

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 things! if you need telling, how can you comprehend
it? Alexander believed in virtue, he staked his head, he staked
his own life on that faith, his great soul was fitted to hold such
a faith. To swallow that draught 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.

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 list of symbols
which mean nothing to them? They will learn the symbols when they
learn the things signified; 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, this 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. [Footnote: The learning of
most philosophers is like the learning of children. Vast erudition
results less in the multitude of ideas than in a multitude of
images. Dates, names, places, all objects isolated or unconnected
with ideas are merely retained in the memory for symbols, and we
rarely recall any of these without seeing the right or left page
of the book in which we read it, or the form in which we first saw
it. Most science was of this kind till recently. The science of
our times is another matter; study and observation are things of
the past; we dream and the dreams of a bad night are given to us as
philosophy. You will say I too am a dreamer; I admit it, but I do
what the others fail to do, I give my dreams as dreams, and leave
the reader to discover whether there is anything in them which may
prove useful to those who are awake.]

No, if nature has given the child this plasticity of brain which
fits 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 present
meaning or future use for the child, which flood of words overwhelms
his sad and barren childhood. But by means of this plasticity all
the ideas he can understand and use, all that concern his happiness
and will some day throw light upon his duties, should be traced at
an early age in indelible characters upon his brain, to guide him
to live in such a way as befits his nature and his powers.

Without the study of books, such a memory as the child may possess
is not left idle; everything he sees and hears makes an impression
on him, he keeps a record of men's sayings and doings, and his
whole environment is the book from which he unconsciously enriches
his memory, till his judgment is able to profit by it.

To select these objects, to take care to present him constantly
with those he may know, to conceal from him those he ought not to
know, this is the real way of training his early memory; and in
this way you must try to provide him with a storehouse of knowledge
which will serve for his education in youth and his conduct throughout
life. True, this method does not produce infant prodigies, nor will
it reflect glory upon their tutors and governesses, but it produces
men, strong, right-thinking men, vigorous both in mind and body,
men who do not win admiration as children, but honour as men.

Emile will not learn anything by heart, not even fables, not even
the fables of La Fontaine, simple and delightful as they are,
for the words are no more the fable than the words of history are
history. How can people be so blind as to call fables the child's
system of morals, without considering that the child is not only
amused by the apologue 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 profiting by it. Men may be taught
by fables; children require the naked truth.

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 exclaim. Paradoxes they may
be; but let us see if there is not some truth in them.

I maintain that the child does not understand the fables he is
taught, for however you try to explain them, the teaching you wish
to extract from them demands ideas which he cannot grasp, while the
poetical form which makes it easier to remember makes it harder to
understand, so that clearness is sacrificed to facility. Without
quoting the host 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.

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 FOX AND THE CROW

A FABLE

"Maitre corbeau, sur un arbre perche" (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 perche"? 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.

"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.

"Maitre renard, par l'odeur alleche" (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.

"Alleche." 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?

"Alleche, 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.

"Lui tient a peu pres 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.

"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."

"Que vous etes joli! Que vous me semblez beau!" ("How handsome you
are, how beautiful in my eyes!")--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.

"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 onl