Produced by Al Haines
Heath's Pedagogical Library--4
EMILE:
OR, CONCERNING EDUCATION
BY
JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU
EXTRACTS
_CONTAINING THE PRINCIPAL ELEMENTS OF PEDAGOGY FOUND IN THE FIRST THREE
BOOKS; WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND NOTES BY_
JULES STEEG, DEPUTE, PARIS, FRANCE
TRANSLATED BY
ELEANOR WORTHINGTON
FORMERLY OF THE COOK COUNTY (ILL.) NORMAL SCHOOL
D. C. HEATH & CO., PUBLISHERS
BOSTON -- NEW YORK -- CHICAGO
Entered, according to Act of Congress, In the year 1888, by
GINN, HEATH, & CO.,
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
Printed in U. S. A.
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.
M. Jules Steeg has rendered a real service to French and American
teachers by his judicious selections from Rousseau's Emile. For the
three-volume novel of a hundred years ago, with its long disquisitions
and digressions, so dear to the heart of our patient ancestors, is now
distasteful to all but lovers of the curious in books.
"Emile" is like an antique mirror of brass; it reflects the features of
educational humanity no less faithfully than one of more modern
construction. In these few pages will be found the germ of all that is
useful in present systems of education, as well as most of the
ever-recurring mistakes of well-meaning zealots.
The eighteenth century translations of this wonderful book have for
many readers the disadvantage of an English style long disused. It is
hoped that this attempt at a new translation may, with all its defects,
have the one merit of being in the dialect of the nineteenth century,
and may thus reach a wider circle of readers.
INTRODUCTION.
Jean Jacques Rousseau's book on education has had a powerful influence
throughout Europe, and even in the New World. It was in its day a kind
of gospel. It had its share in bringing about the Revolution which
renovated the entire aspect of our country. Many of the reforms so
lauded by it have since then been carried into effect, and at this day
seem every-day affairs. In the eighteenth century they were unheard-of
daring; they were mere dreams.
Long before that time the immortal satirist Rabelais, and, after him,
Michael Montaigne, had already divined the truth, had pointed out
serious defects in education, and the way to reform. No one followed
out their suggestions, or even gave them a hearing. Routine went on
its way. Exercises of memory,--the science that consists of mere
words,--pedantry, barren and vain-glorious,--held fast their "bad
eminence." The child was treated as a machine, or as a man in
miniature, no account being taken of his nature or of his real needs;
without any greater solicitude about reasonable method--the hygiene of
mind--than about the hygiene of the body.
Rousseau, who had educated himself, and very badly at that, was
impressed with the dangers of the education of his day. A mother
having asked his advice, he took up the pen to write it; and, little by
little, his counsels grew into a book, a large work, a pedagogic
romance.
This romance, when it appeared in 1762, created a great noise and a
great scandal. The Archbishop of Paris, Christophe de Beaumont, saw in
it a dangerous, mischievous work, and gave himself the trouble of
writing a long encyclical letter in order to point out the book to the
reprobation of the faithful. This document of twenty-seven chapters is
a formal refutation of the theories advanced in "Emile."
The archbishop declares that the plan of education proposed by the
author, "far from being in accordance with Christianity, is not fitted
to form citizens, or even men." He accuses Rousseau of irreligion and
of bad faith; he denounces him to the temporal power as animated "by a
spirit of insubordination and of revolt." He sums up by solemnly
condemning the book "as containing an abominable doctrine, calculated
to overthrow natural law, and to destroy the foundations of the
Christian religion; establishing maxims contrary to Gospel morality;
having a tendency to disturb the peace of empires, to stir up subjects
to revolt against their sovereign; as containing a great number of
propositions respectively false, scandalous, full of hatred toward the
Church and its ministers, derogating from the respect due to Holy
Scripture and the traditions of the Church, erroneous, impious,
blasphemous, and heretical."
In those days, such a condemnation was a serious matter; its
consequences to an author might be terrible. Rousseau had barely time
to flee. His arrest was decreed by the parliament of Paris, and his
book was burned by the executioner. A few years before this, the
author would have run the risk of being burned with his book.
As a fugitive, Rousseau did not find a safe retreat even in his own
country. He was obliged to leave Geneva, where his book was also
condemned, and Berne, where he had sought refuge, but whence he was
driven by intolerance. He owed it to the protection of Lord Keith,
governor of Neufchatel, a principality belonging to the King of
Prussia, that he lived for some time in peace in the little town of
Motiers in the Val de Travera.
It was from this place that he replied to the archbishop of Paris by an
apology, a long-winded work in which he repels, one after another, the
imputations of his accuser, and sets forth anew with greater urgency
his philosophical and religious principles. This work, written on a
rather confused plan but with impassioned eloquence, manifests a lofty
and sincere spirit. It is said that the archbishop was deeply touched
by it, and never afterward spoke of the author of "Emile" without
extreme reserve, sometimes even eulogizing his character and his
virtues.
The renown of the book, condemned by so high an authority, was immense.
Scandal, by attracting public attention to it, did it good service.
What was most serious and most suggestive in it was not, perhaps,
seized upon; but the "craze" of which it was the object had,
notwithstanding, good results. Mothers were won over, and resolved to
nurse their own infants; great lords began to learn handicrafts, like
Rousseau's imaginary pupil; physical exercises came into fashion; the
spirit of innovation was forcing itself a way.
It was not among ourselves, however, that the theories of Rousseau were
most eagerly experimented upon; it was among foreigners, in Germany, in
Switzerland, that they found more resolute partisans, and a field more
ready to receive them.
Three men above all the rest are noted for having popularized the
pedagogic method of Rousseau, and for having been inspired in their
labors by "Emile." These were Basedow, Pestalozzi, and Froebel.
Basedow, a German theologian, had devoted himself entirely to dogmatic
controversy, until the reading of "Emile" had the effect of enlarging
his mental horizon, and of revealing to him his true vocation. He
wrote important books to show how Rousseau's method could be applied in
different departments of instruction, and founded at Dessau, in 1774,
an institution to bring that method within the domain of experience.
This institution, to which he gave the name of "Philanthropinum," was
secular in the true sense of the word; and at that time this was in
itself a novelty. It was open to pupils of every belief and every
nationality, and proposed to render study easy, pleasant, and
expeditious to them, by following the directions of nature itself. In
the first rank of his disciples may be placed Campe, who succeeded him
in the management of the Philanthropinum.
Pestalozzi of Zuerich, one of the foremost educators of modern times,
also found his whole life transformed by the reading of "Emile," which
awoke in him the genius of a reformer. He himself also, in 1775,
founded a school, in order to put in practice there his progressive and
professional method of teaching, which was a fruitful development of
seeds sown by Rousseau in his book. Pestalozzi left numerous
writings,--romances, treatises, reviews,--all having for sole object
the popularization of his ideas and processes of education. The most
distinguished among his disciples and continuators is Froebel, the
founder of those primary schools or asylums known by the name of
"kindergartens," and the author of highly esteemed pedagogic works.
These various attempts, these new and ingenious processes which, step
by step, have made their way among us, and are beginning to make their
workings felt, even in institutions most stoutly opposed to progress,
are all traceable to Rousseau's "Emile."
It is therefore not too much for Frenchmen, for teachers, for parents,
for every one in our country who is interested in what concerns
teaching, to go back to the source of so great a movement.
It is true that "Emile" contains pages that have outlived their day,
many odd precepts, many false ideas, many disputable and destructive
theories; but at the same time we find in it so many sagacious
observations, such upright counsels, suitable even to modern times, so
lofty an ideal, that, in spite of everything, we cannot read and study
it without profit. There is no one who does not know the book by name
and by reputation; but how many parents, and even teachers, have never
read it!
This is because a large part of the book is no longer in accordance
with the actual condition of things; because its very plan, its
fundamental idea, are outside of the truth. We are obliged to exercise
judgment, to make selections. Some of it must be taken, some left
untouched. This is what we have done in the present edition.
We have not, indeed, the presumption to correct Rousseau, or to
substitute an expurgated "Emile" for the authentic "Emile." We have
simply wished to draw the attention of the teachers of childhood to
those pages of this book which have least grown old, which can still be
of service, can hasten the downfall of the old systems, can emphasize,
by their energy and beauty of language, methods already inaugurated and
reforms already undertaken. These methods and reforms cannot be too
often recommended and set in a clear light. We have desired to call to
the rescue this powerful and impassioned writer, who brings to bear
upon every subject he approaches the magical attractiveness of his
style.
There is absolutely nothing practicable in his system. It consists in
isolating a child from the rest of the world; in creating expressly for
him a tutor, who is a phoenix among his kind; in depriving him of
father, mother, brothers, and sisters, his companions in study; in
surrounding him with a perpetual charlatanism, under the pretext of
following nature; and in showing him only through the veil of a
factitious atmosphere the society in which he is to live. And,
nevertheless, at each step it is sound reason by which we are met; by
an astonishing paradox, this whimsicality is full of good sense; this
dream overflows with realities; this improbable and chimerical romance
contains the substance and the marrow of a rational and truly modern
treatise on pedagogy. Sometimes we must read between the lines, add
what experience has taught us since that day, transpose into an
atmosphere of open democracy these pages, written under the old order
of things, but even then quivering with the new world which they were
bringing to light, and for which they prepared the way.
Reading "Emile" in the light of modern prejudices, we can see in it
more than the author wittingly put into it; but not more than logic and
the instinct of genius set down there.
To unfold the powers of children in due proportion to their age; not to
transcend their ability; to arouse in them the sense of the observer
and of the pioneer; to make them discoverers rather than imitators; to
teach them accountability to themselves and not slavish dependence upon
the words of others; to address ourselves more to the will than to
custom, to the reason rather than to the memory; to substitute for
verbal recitations lessons about things; to lead to theory by way of
art; to assign to physical movements and exercises a prominent place,
from the earliest hours of life up to perfect maturity; such are the
principles scattered broadcast in this book, and forming a happy
counterpoise to the oddities of which Rousseau was perhaps most proud.
He takes the child in its cradle, almost before its birth; he desires
that mothers should fulfil the sacred duty of nursing them at the
breast. If there must be a nurse, he knows how to choose her, how she
ought to be treated, how she should be fed. He watches over the
movements of the new-born child, over its first playthings. All these
counsels bear the stamp of good sense and of experience; or, rather,
they result from a power of divination singular enough in a man who was
not willing to take care of his own children. In this way, day by day,
he follows up the physical and moral development of the little being,
all whose ideas and feelings he analyzes, whom he guides with wisdom
and with tact throughout the mazes of a life made up of convention and
artifice.
We have carefully avoided suppressing the fictions of the gardener and
of the mountebank; because they are characteristic of his manner, and
because, after all, these pre-arranged scenes which, as they stand, are
anything in the world rather than real teaching, contain, nevertheless,
right notions, and opinions which may suggest to intelligent teachers
processes in prudent education. Such teachers will not copy the form;
they will not imitate the awkward clap-trap; but, yielding to the
inspiration of the dominant idea, they will, in a way more in
accordance with nature, manage to thrill with life the teaching of
facts, and will aid the mind in giving birth to its ideas. This is the
old method of Socrates, the eternal method of reason, the only method
which really educates.
We have brought this volume to an end with the third book of "Emile."
The fourth and fifth books which follow are not within the domain of
pedagogy. They contain admirable pages, which ought to be read; which
occupy one of the foremost places in our literature; which deal with
philosophy, with ethics, with theology; but they concern themselves
with the manner of directing young men and women, and no longer with
childhood. The author conducts his Emile even as far as to his
betrothal; he devotes an entire book to the betrothed herself, Sophie,
and closes his volume only after he has united them in marriage.
We will not go so far. We will leave Emile upon the confines of youth,
at the time when he escapes from school, and when he is about beginning
to feel that he is a man. At this difficult and critical period the
teacher no longer suffices. Then, above all things, is needed all the
influence of the family; the father's example, the mother's
clear-sighted tenderness, worthy friendships, an environment of
meritorious people, of upright minds animated by lofty ideas, who
attract within their orbit this ardent and inquisitive being, eager for
novelty, for action, and for independence.
Artifices and stratagems are then no longer good for anything; they are
very soon laid open to the light. All that can be required of a
teacher is that he shall have furnished his pupils with a sound and
strong education, drawn from the sources of reason, experience, and
nature; that he shall have prepared them to learn to form judgments, to
make use of their faculties, to enter valiantly upon study and upon
life. It seems to us that the pages of Rousseau here published may be
a useful guide in the pursuit of such a result.
JULES STEEG.
BOOK FIRST.
The first book, after some general remarks upon education, treats
especially of early infancy; of the first years of life; of the care to
be bestowed upon very young children; of the nursing of them, of the
laws of health.
He makes education begin at birth; expresses himself on the subject of
the habits to be given or to be avoided; discusses the use and meaning
of tears, outcries, gestures, also the language that should be used
with young children, so that, from their tenderest years, the
inculcating of false ideas and the giving a wrong bent of mind may be
avoided.
GENERAL REMARKS.
The Object of Education.
Coming from the hand of the Author of all things, everything is good;
in the hands of man, everything degenerates. Man obliges one soil to
nourish the productions of another, one tree to bear the fruits of
another; he mingles and confounds climates, elements, seasons; he
mutilates his dog, his horse, his slave. He overturns everything,
disfigures everything; he loves deformity, monsters; he desires that
nothing should be as nature made it, not even man himself. To please
him, man must be broken in like a horse; man must be adapted to man's
own fashion, like a tree in his garden.[1]
Were it not for all this, matters would be still worse. No one wishes
to be a half-developed being; and in the present condition of things, a
man left to himself among others from his birth would be the most
deformed among them all. Prejudices, authority, necessities, example,
all the social institutions in which we are submerged, would stifle
nature in him, and would put nothing in its place. In such a man
nature would be like a shrub sprung up by chance in the midst of a
highway, and jostled from all sides, bent in every direction, by the
passers-by.
Plants are improved by cultivation, and men by education. If man were
born large and strong, his size and strength would be useless to him
until he had learned to use them. They would be prejudicial to him, by
preventing others from thinking of assisting him; and left to himself
he would die of wretchedness before he had known his own necessities.
We pity the state of infancy; we do not perceive that the human race
would have perished if man had not begun by being a child.
We are born weak, we need strength; we are born destitute of all
things, we need assistance; we are born stupid, we need judgment. All
that we have not at our birth, and that we need when grown up, is given
us by education.
This education comes to us from nature itself, or from other men, or
from circumstances. The internal development of our faculties and of
our organs is the education nature gives us; the use we are taught to
make of this development is the education we get from other men; and
what we learn, by our own experience, about things that interest as, is
the education of circumstances.
Each of us is therefore formed by three kinds of teachers. The pupil
in whom their different lessons contradict one another is badly
educated, and will never be in harmony with himself; the one in whom
they all touch upon the same points and tend toward the same object
advances toward that goal only, and lives accordingly. He alone is
well educated.
Now of these three different educations, that of nature does not depend
upon us; that of circumstances depends upon us only in certain
respects; that of men is the only one of which we are really masters,
and that solely because we think we are. For who can hope to direct
entirely the speech and conduct of all who surround a child?
As soon, therefore, as education becomes an art, its success is almost
impossible, since the agreement of circumstances necessary to this
success is independent of personal effort. All that the utmost care
can do is to approach more or less nearly our object; but, for
attaining it, special good fortune is needed.
What is this object? That of nature itself, as has just been proved.
Since the agreement of the three educations is necessary to their
perfection, it is toward the one for which we ourselves can do nothing
that we must direct both the others. But perhaps this word "nature"
has too vague a meaning; we must here try to define it.
In the natural order of things, all men being equal, the vocation
common to all is the state of manhood; and whoever is well trained for
that, cannot fulfil badly any vocation which depends upon it. Whether
my pupil be destined for the army, the church, or the bar, matters
little to me. Before he can think of adopting the vocation of his
parents, nature calls upon him to be a man. How to live is the
business I wish to teach him. On leaving my hands he will not, I
admit, be a magistrate, a soldier, or a priest; first of all he will be
a man. All that a man ought to be he can be, at need, as well as any
one else can. Fortune will in vain alter his position, for he will
always occupy his own.
Our real study is that of the state of man. He among us who best knows
how to bear the good and evil fortunes of this life is, in my opinion,
the best educated; whence it follows that true education consists less
in precept than in practice. We begin to instruct ourselves when we
begin to live; our education commences with the commencement of our
life; our first teacher is our nurse. For this reason the word
"education" had among the ancients another meaning which we no longer
attach to it; it signified nutriment.
We must then take a broader view of things, and consider in our pupil
man in the abstract, man exposed to all the accidents of human life.
If man were born attached to the soil of a country, if the same season
continued throughout the year, if every one held his fortune by such a
tenure that he could never change it, the established customs of to-day
would be in certain respects good. The child educated for his
position, and never leaving it, could not be exposed to the
inconveniences of another.
But seeing that human affairs are changeable, seeing the restless and
disturbing spirit of this century, which overturns everything once in a
generation, can a more senseless method be imagined than to educate a
child as if he were never to leave his room, as if he were obliged to
be constantly surrounded by his servants? If the poor creature takes
but one step on the earth, if he comes down so much as one stair, he is
ruined. This is not teaching him to endure pain; it is training him to
feel it more keenly.
We think only of preserving the child: this is not enough. We ought to
teach him to preserve himself when he is a man; to bear the blows of
fate; to brave both wealth and wretchedness; to live, if need be, among
the snows of Iceland or upon the burning rock of Malta. In vain you
take precautions against his dying,--he must die after all; and if his
death be not indeed the result of those very precautions, they are none
the less mistaken. It is less important to keep him from dying than it
is to teach him how to live. To live is not merely to breathe, it is
to act. It is to make use of our organs, of our senses, of our
faculties, of all the powers which bear witness to us of our own
existence. He who has lived most is not he who has numbered the most
years, but he who has been most truly conscious of what life is. A man
may have himself buried at the age of a hundred years, who died from
the hour of his birth. He would have gained something by going to his
grave in youth, if up to that time he had only lived.
The New-born Child.
The new-born child needs to stretch and to move his limbs so as to draw
them out of the torpor in which, rolled into a ball, they have so long
remained. We do stretch his limbs, it is true, but we prevent him from
moving them. We even constrain his head into a baby's cap. It seems
as if we were afraid he might appear to be alive. The inaction, the
constraint in which we keep his limbs, cannot fail to interfere with
the circulation of the blood and of the secretions, to prevent the
child from growing strong and sturdy, and to change his constitution.
In regions where these extravagant precautions are not taken, the men
are all large, strong, and well proportioned. Countries in which
children are swaddled swarm with hunchbacks, with cripples, with
persons crook-kneed, stunted, rickety, deformed in all kinds of ways.
For fear that the bodies of children may be deformed by free movements,
we hasten to deform them by putting them into a press. Of our own
accord we cripple them to prevent their laming themselves.
Must not such a cruel constraint have an influence upon their temper as
well as upon their constitution? Their first feeling is a feeling of
constraint and of suffering. To all their necessary movements they
find only obstacles. More unfortunate than chained criminals, they
make fruitless efforts, they fret themselves, they cry. Do you tell me
that the first sounds they make are cries? I can well believe it; you
thwart them from the time they are born. The first gifts they receive
from you are chains, the first treatment they undergo is torment.
Having nothing free but the voice, why should they not use it in
complaints? They cry on account of the suffering you cause them; if
you were pinioned in the same way, your own cries would be louder.
Whence arises this unreasonable custom of swaddling children? From an
unnatural custom. Since the time when mothers, despising their first
duty, no longer wish to nurse their own children at the breast, it has
been necessary to intrust the little ones to hired women. These,
finding themselves in this way the mothers of strange children,
concerning whom the voice of nature is silent to them, seek only to
spare themselves annoyance. A child at liberty would require incessant
watching; but after he is well swaddled, they throw him into a corner
without troubling themselves at all on account of his cries. Provided
there are no proofs of the nurse's carelessness, provided that the
nursling does not break his legs or his arms, what does it matter,
after all, that he is pining away, or that he continues feeble for the
rest of his life? His limbs are preserved at the expense of his life,
and whatever happens, the nurse is held free from blame.
It is pretended that children, when left free, may put themselves into
bad positions, and make movements liable to injure the proper
conformation of their limbs. This is one of the weak arguments of our
false wisdom, which no experience has ever confirmed. Of that
multitude of children who, among nations more sensible than ourselves,
are brought up in the full freedom of their limbs, not one is seen to
wound or lame himself. They cannot give their movements force enough
to make them dangerous; and when they assume a hurtful position, pain
soon warns them to change it.
We have not yet brought ourselves to the point of swaddling puppies or
kittens; do we see that any inconvenience results to them from this
negligence? Children are heavier, indeed; but in proportion they are
weaker. They can scarcely move themselves at all; how can they lame
themselves? If laid upon the back they would die in that position,
like the tortoise, without being able ever to turn themselves again.
[This want of intelligence In the care bestowed upon young children is
seen particularly in those mothers who give themselves no concern about
their own, do not themselves nurse them, intrust them to hireling
nurses. This custom is fatal to all; first to the children and finally
to families, where barrenness becomes the rule, where woman sacrifices
to her own convenience the joys and the duties of motherhood.]
Would you recall every one to his highest duties? Begin with the
mothers; you will be astonished at the changes you will effect. From
this first depravity all others come in succession. The entire moral
order is changed; natural feeling is extinguished in all hearts.
Within our homes there is less cheerfulness; the touching sight of a
growing family no longer attaches the husband or attracts the attention
of strangers. The mother whose children are not seen is less
respected. There is no such thing as a family living together; habit
no longer strengthens the ties of blood. There are no longer fathers
and mothers and children and brothers and sisters. They all scarcely
know one another; how then should they love one another? Each one
thinks only of himself. When home is a melancholy, lonely place, we
must indeed go elsewhere to enjoy ourselves.
But let mothers only vouchsafe to nourish their children,[2] and our
manners will reform themselves; the feelings of nature will re-awaken
in all hearts. The State will be repeopled; this chief thing, this one
thing will bring all the rest into order again. The attractions of
home life present the best antidote to bad morals. The bustling life
of little children, considered so tiresome, becomes pleasant; it makes
the father and the mother more necessary to one another, more dear to
one another; it draws closer between them the conjugal tie. When the
family is sprightly and animated, domestic cares form the dearest
occupation of the wife and the sweetest recreation of the husband.
Thus the correction of this one abuse would soon result in a general
reform; nature would resume all her rights. When women are once more
true mothers, men will become true fathers and husbands.
If mothers are not real mothers, children are not real children toward
them. Their duties to one another are reciprocal, and if these be
badly fulfilled on the one side, they will be neglected on the other
side. The child ought to love his mother before he knows that it is
his duty to love her. If the voice of natural affection be not
strengthened by habit and by care, it will grow dumb even in childhood;
and thus the heart dies, so to speak, before it is born. Thus from the
outset we are beyond the pale of nature.
There is an opposite way by which a woman goes beyond it; that is,
when, instead of neglecting a mother's cares, she carries them to
excess; when she makes her child her idol. She increases and fosters
his weakness to prevent him from feeling it. Hoping to shelter him
from the laws of nature, she wards from him shocks of pain. She does
not consider how, for the sake of preserving him for a moment from some
inconveniences, she is heaping upon his head future accidents and
perils; nor how cruel is the caution which prolongs the weakness of
childhood in one who must bear the fatigues of a grown-up man. The
fable says that, to render her son invulnerable, Thetis plunged him
into the Styx. This allegory is beautiful and clear. The cruel
mothers of whom I am speaking do far otherwise; by plunging their
children into effeminacy they open their pores to ills of every kind,
to which, when grown up, they fall a certain prey.
Watch nature carefully, and follow the paths she traces out for you.
She gives children continual exercise; she strengthens their
constitution by ordeals of every kind; she teaches them early what pain
and trouble mean. The cutting of their teeth gives them fever, sharp
fits of colic throw them into convulsions, long coughing chokes them,
worms torment them, repletion corrupts their blood, different leavens
fermenting there cause dangerous eruptions. Nearly the whole of
infancy is sickness and danger; half the children born into the world
die before their eighth year. These trials past, the child has gained
strength, and as soon as he can use life, its principle becomes more
assured.
This is the law of nature. Why do you oppose her? Do you not see that
in thinking to correct her you destroy her work and counteract the
effect of all her cares? In your opinion, to do without what she is
doing within is to redouble the danger. On the contrary, it is really
to avert, to mitigate that danger. Experience teaches that more
children who are delicately reared die than others. Provided we do not
exceed the measure of their strength, it is better to employ it than to
hoard it. Give them practice, then, in the trials they will one day
have to endure. Inure their bodies to the inclemencies of the seasons,
of climates, of elements; to hunger, thirst, fatigue; plunge them into
the water of the Styx. Before the habits of the body are acquired we
can give it such as we please without risk. But when once it has
reached its full vigor, any alteration is perilous to its well-being.
A child will endure changes which a man could not bear. The fibres of
the former, soft and pliable, take without effort the bent we give
them; those of man, more hardened, do not without violence change those
they have received. We may therefore make a child robust without
exposing his life or his health; and even if there were some risk we
still ought not to hesitate. Since there are risks inseparable from
human life, can we do better than to throw them back upon that period
of life when they are least disadvantageous?
A child becomes more precious as he advances in age. To the value of
his person is added that of the cares he has cost us; if we lose his
life, his own consciousness of death is added to our sense of loss.
Above all things, then, in watching over his preservation we must think
of the future. We must arm him against the misfortunes of youth before
he has reached them. For, if the value of life increases up to the age
when life becomes useful, what folly it is to spare the child some
troubles, and to heap them upon the age of reason! Are these the
counsels of a master?
In all ages suffering is the lot of man. Even to the cares of
self-preservation pain is joined. Happy are we, who in childhood are
acquainted with only physical misfortunes--misfortunes far less cruel,
less painful than others; misfortunes which far more rarely make us
renounce life. We do not kill ourselves on account of the pains of
gout; seldom do any but those of the mind produce despair.[3]
We pity the lot of infancy, and it is our own lot that we ought to
pity. Our greatest misfortunes come to us from ourselves.
At birth a child cries; his earliest infancy is spent in crying.
Sometimes he is tossed, he is petted, to appease him; sometimes he is
threatened, beaten, to make him keep quiet. We either do as he
pleases, or else we exact from him what we please; we either submit to
his whims, or make him submit to ours. There is no middle course; he
must either give or receive orders. Thus his first ideas are those of
absolute rule and of slavery. Before he knows how to speak, he
commands; before he is able to act, he obeys; and sometimes he is
punished before he knows what his faults are, or rather, before he is
capable of committing them. Thus do we early pour into his young heart
the passions that are afterward imputed to nature; and, after having
taken pains to make him wicked, we complain of finding him wicked.
A child passes six or seven years of his life in this manner in the
hands of women, the victim of his own caprice and of theirs. After
having made him learn this and that,--after having loaded his memory
either with words he cannot understand, or with facts which are of no
use to him,--after having stifled his natural disposition by the
passions we have created, we put this artificial creature into the
hands of a tutor who finishes the development of the artificial germs
he finds already formed, and teaches him everything except to know
himself, everything except to know how to live and how to make himself
happy. Finally, when this enslaved child, this little tyrant, full of
learning and devoid of sense, enfeebled alike in mind and body, is cast
upon the world, he there by his unfitness, by his pride, and by all his
vices, makes us deplore human wretchedness and perversity. We deceive
ourselves; this is the man our whims have created. Nature makes men by
a different process.
Do you then wish him to preserve his original form? Preserve it from
the moment he enters the world. As soon as he is born take possession
of him, and do not leave him until he is a man. Without this you will
never succeed. As the mother is the true nurse, the father is the true
teacher. Let them be of one mind as to the order in which their
functions are fulfilled, as well as in regard to their plan; let the
child pass from the hands of the one into the hands of the other. He
will be better educated by a father who is judicious, even though of
moderate attainments, than by the most skilful master in the world.
For zeal will supplement talent better than talent can supply what only
zeal can give.
A father, when he brings his children into existence and supports them,
has, in so doing, fulfilled only a third part of his task. To the
human race he owes men; to society, men fitted for society; to the
State, citizens. Every man who can pay this triple debt, and does not
pay it is a guilty man; and if he pays it by halves, he is perhaps more
guilty still. He who cannot fulfil the duties of a father has no right
to be a father. Not poverty, nor severe labor, nor human respect can
release him from the duty of supporting his children and of educating
them himself. Readers, you may believe my words. I prophesy to any
one who has natural feeling and neglects these sacred duties,--that he
will long shed bitter tears over this fault, and that for those tears
he will find no consolation.[4]
[It being supposed that the father is unable or unwilling to charge
himself personally with the education of his son, he must charge a
third person with it, must seek out a master, a teacher for the child.]
The qualifications of a good tutor are very freely discussed. The
first qualification I should require in him, and this one presupposes
many others, is, that he shall not be capable of selling himself.
There are employments so noble that we cannot fulfil them for money
without showing ourselves unworthy to fulfil them. Such an employment
is that of a soldier; such a one is that of a teacher. Who, then,
shall educate my child? I have told you already,--yourself. I cannot!
Then make for yourself a friend who can. I see no other alternative.
A teacher! what a great soul he ought to be! Truly, to form a man, one
must be either himself a father, or else something more than human.
And this is the office you calmly entrust to hirelings![5]
The Earliest Education.
Children's first impressions are purely those of feeling; they perceive
only pleasure and pain. Unable either to move about, or to grasp
anything with their hands, they need a great deal of time to form
sensations which represent, and so make them aware of objects outside
of themselves. But, during all this time, while these objects are
extending, and, as it were, receding from their eyes, assuming, to
them, form and dimension, the constantly recurring sensations begin to
subject the little creatures to the sway of habit. We see their eyes
incessantly turning toward the light; and, if it comes to them from one
side, unwittingly taking the direction of that side; so that their
faces ought to be carefully turned toward the light, lest they become
squint-eyed, or accustom themselves to look awry. They should, also,
early accustom themselves to darkness, or else they will cry and scream
as soon as they are left in the dark. Food and sleep, if too exactly
proportioned, become necessary to them after the lapse of the same
intervals; and soon the desire arises not from necessity, but from
habit. Or rather, habit adds a new want to those of nature, and this
must be prevented.
The only habit a child should be allowed to form is to contract no
habits whatever. Let him not be carried upon one arm more than upon
another; let him not be accustomed to put forth one hand rather than
the other, or to use it oftener; nor to desire to eat, to sleep, to act
in any way, at regular hours; nor to be unable to stay alone either by
night or by day. Prepare long beforehand for the time when he shall
freely use all his strength. Do this by leaving his body under the
control of its natural bent, by fitting him to be always master of
himself, and to carry out his own will in everything as soon as he has
a will of his own.
Since the only kinds of objects presented to him are likely to make him
either timid or courageous, why should not his education begin before
he speaks or understands? I would habituate him to seeing new objects,
though they be ugly, repulsive, or singular. But let this be by
degrees, and from a distance, until he has become accustomed to them,
and, from seeing them handled by others, shall at last handle them
himself. If during his infancy he has seen without fear frogs,
serpents, crawfishes, he will, when grown up, see without shrinking any
animal that may be shown him. For one who daily sees frightful
objects, there are none such.
All children are afraid of masks. I begin by showing Emile the mask of
a pleasant face. By and by some one puts the mask upon his own face,
so that the child can see it. I begin to laugh; every one else laughs,
and the child with the rest. By degrees I familiarize him with less
comely masks, and finally with really hideous ones. If I have managed
the process well, he will, far from being frightened at the last mask,
laugh at it as he laughed at the first. After that, I shall not fear
his being frightened by any one with a mask.
When, in the farewell scene between Hector and Andromache, the little
Astyanax, terrified at the plume floating from a helmet, fails to
recognize his father, throws himself, crying, upon his nurse's breast,
and wins from his mother a smile bright with tears, what ought to be
done to soothe his fear? Precisely what Hector does. He places the
helmet on the ground, and then caresses his child. At a more tranquil
moment, this should not have been all. They should have drawn near the
helmet, played with its plumes, caused the child to handle them. At
last the nurse should have lifted the helmet and laughingly set it on
her own head--if, indeed, the hand of a woman dared touch the armor of
Hector.
If I wish to familiarize Emile with the noise of fire-arms, I first
burn some powder in a pistol. The quickly vanishing flame, the new
kind of lightning, greatly pleases him. I repeat the process, using
more powder. By degrees I put into the pistol a small charge, without
ramming it down; then a larger charge; finally, I accustom him to the
noise of a gun, to bombs, to cannon-shots, to the most terrific noises.
I have noticed that children are rarely afraid of thunder, unless,
indeed, the thunder-claps are so frightful as actually to wound the
organ of hearing. Otherwise, they fear it only when they have been
taught that thunder sometimes wounds or kills. When reason begins to
affright them, let habit reassure them. By a slow and well conducted
process the man or the child is rendered fearless of everything.
In this outset of life, while memory and imagination are still
inactive, the child pays attention only to what actually affects his
senses. The first materials of his knowledge are his sensations. If,
therefore, these are presented to him in suitable order, his memory can
hereafter present them to his understanding in the same order. But as
he attends to his sensations only, it will at first suffice to show him
very clearly the connection between these sensations, and the objects
which give rise to them. He is eager to touch everything, to handle
everything. Do not thwart this restless desire; it suggests to him a
very necessary apprenticeship. It is thus he learns to feel the heat
and coldness, hardness and softness, heaviness and lightness of bodies;
to judge of their size, their shape, and all their sensible qualities,
by looking, by touching, by listening; above all, by comparing the
results of sight with those of touch, estimating with the eye the
sensation a thing produces upon the fingers.
By movement alone we learn the existence of things which are not
ourselves; and it is by our own movements alone that we gain the idea
of extension.
Because the child has not this idea, he stretches out his hand
indifferently to seize an object which touches him, or one which is a
hundred paces distant from him. The effort he makes in doing this
appears to you a sign of domination, an order he gives the object to
come nearer, or to you to bring it to him. It is nothing of the kind.
It means only that the object seen first within the brain, then upon
the eye, is now seen at arm's length, and that he does not conceive of
any distance beyond his reach. Be careful, then, to walk often with
him, to transport him from one place to another, to let him feel the
change of position, and, in this way to teach him how to judge of
distances. When he begins to know them, change the plan; carry him
only where it is convenient for you to do so, and not wherever it
pleases him. For as soon as he is no longer deceived by the senses,
his attempts arise from another cause. This change is remarkable and
demands explanation.
The uneasiness arising from our wants expresses itself by signs
whenever help in supplying these wants is needed; hence the cries of
children. They cry a great deal, and this is natural. Since all their
sensations are those of feeling, children enjoy them in silence, when
the sensations are pleasant; otherwise they express them in their own
language, and ask relief. Now as long as children are awake they
cannot be in a state of indifference; they either sleep or are moved by
pleasure and pain.
All our languages are the result of art. Whether there is a natural
language, common to all mankind, has long been a matter of
investigation. Without doubt there is such a language, and it is the
one that children utter before they know how to talk. This language is
not articulate, but it is accentuated, sonorous, intelligible. The
using of our own language has led us to neglect this, even so far as to
forget it altogether. Let us study children, and we shall soon acquire
it again from them. Nurses are our teachers in this language. They
understand all their nurslings say, they answer them, they hold really
connected dialogues with them. And, although they pronounce words,
these words are entirely useless; the child understands, not the
meaning of the words, but the accent which accompanies them.
To the language of the voice is added the no less forcible language of
gesture. This gesture is not that of children's feeble hands; it is
that seen in their faces. It is astonishing to see how much expression
these immature countenances already have. From moment to moment, their
features change with inconceivable quickness. On them you see the
smile, the wish, the fear, spring into life, and pass away, like so
many lightning flashes. Each time you seem to see a different
countenance. They certainly have much more flexible facial muscles
than ours. On the other hand, their dull eyes tell us almost nothing
at all.
Such is naturally the character of their expression when all their
wants are physical. Sensations are made known by grimaces, sentiments
by looks.
As the first state of man is wretchedness and weakness, so his first
utterances are complaints and tears. The child feels his need and
cannot satisfy it; he implores aid from others by crying. If he is
hungry or thirsty, he cries; if he is too cold or too warm, he cries;
if he wishes to move or to be kept at rest, he cries; if he wishes to
sleep or to be moved about, he cries. The less control he has of his
own mode of living, the oftener he asks those about him to change it.
He has but one language, because he feels, so to speak, but one sort of
discomfort. In the imperfect condition of his organs, he does not
distinguish their different impressions; all ills produce in him only a
sensation of pain.
From this crying, regarded as so little worthy of attention, arises the
first relation of man to all that surrounds him; just here is forged
the first link of that long chain which constitutes social order.
When the child cries, he is ill at ease; he has some want that he
cannot satisfy. We examine into it, we search for the want, find it,
and relieve it. When we cannot find it, or relieve it, the crying
continues. We are annoyed by it; we caress the child to make him keep
quiet, we rock him and sing to him, to lull him asleep. If he
persists, we grow impatient; we threaten him; brutal nurses sometimes
strike him. These are strange lessons for him upon his entrance into
life.
The first crying of children is a prayer. If we do not heed it well,
this crying soon becomes a command. They begin by asking our aid; they
end by compelling us to serve them. Thus from their very weakness,
whence comes, at first, their feeling of dependence, springs afterward
the idea of empire, and of commanding others. But as this idea is
awakened less by their own wants, than by the fact that we are serving
them, those moral results whose immediate cause is not in nature, are
here perceived. We therefore see why, even at this early age, it is
important to discern the hidden purpose which dictates the gesture or
the cry.