that your pupil may never attain to manhood. What, then, must be
thought of that barbarous education which sacrifices the present to an
uncertain future, loads the child with every description of fetters,
and begins, by making him wretched, to prepare for him some far-away
indefinite happiness he may never enjoy! Even supposing the object of
such an education reasonable, how can we without indignation see the
unfortunate creatures bowed under an insupportable yoke, doomed to
constant labor like so many galley-slaves, without any certainty that
all this toil will ever be of use to them! The years that ought to be
bright and cheerful are passed in tears amid punishments, threats, and
slavery. For his own good, the unhappy child is tortured; and the
death thus summoned will seize on him unperceived amidst all this
melancholy preparation. Who knows how many children die on account of
the extravagant prudence of a father or of a teacher? Happy in
escaping his cruelty, it gives them one advantage; they leave without
regret a life which they know only from its darker side.[2]
O men, be humane! it is your highest duty; be humane to all conditions
of men, to every age, to everything not alien to mankind. What higher
wisdom is there for you than humanity? Love childhood; encourage its
sports, its pleasures, its lovable instincts. Who among us has not at
times looked back with regret to the age when a smile was continually
on our lips, when the soul was always at peace? Why should we rob
these little innocent creatures of the enjoyment of a time so brief, so
transient, of a boon so precious, which they cannot misuse? Why will
you fill with bitterness and sorrow these fleeting years which can no
more return to them than to you? Do you know, you fathers, the moment
when death awaits your children? Do not store up for yourselves
remorse, by taking from them the brief moments nature has given them.
As soon as they can appreciate the delights of existence, let them
enjoy it. At whatever hour God may call them, let them not die without
having tasted life at all.
You answer, "It is the time to correct the evil tendencies of the human
heart. In childhood, when sufferings are less keenly felt, they ought
to be multiplied, so that fewer of them will have to be encountered
during the age of reason." But who has told you that it is your
province to make this arrangement, and that all these fine
instructions, with which you burden the tender mind of a child, will
not one day be more pernicious than useful to him? Who assures you
that you spare him anything when you deal him afflictions with so
lavish a hand? Why do you cause him more unhappiness than he can bear,
when you are not sure that the future will compensate him for these
present evils? And how can you prove that the evil tendencies of which
you pretend to cure him will not arise from your mistaken care rather
than from nature itself! Unhappy foresight, which renders a creature
actually miserable, in the hope, well or ill founded, of one day making
him happy! If these vulgar reasoners confound license with liberty,
and mistake a spoiled child for a child who is made happy, let us teach
them to distinguish the two.
To avoid being misled, let us remember what really accords with our
present abilities. Humanity has its place in the general order of
things; childhood has its place in the order of human life. Mankind
must be considered in the individual man, and childhood in the
individual child. To assign each his place, and to establish him in
it--to direct human passions as human nature will permit--is all we can
do for his welfare. The rest depends on outside influences not under
our control.
Neither Slaves nor Tyrants.
He alone has his own way who, to compass it, does not need the arm of
another to lengthen his own. Consequently freedom, and not authority,
is the greatest good. A man who desires only what he can do for
himself is really free to do whatever he pleases. From this axiom, if
it be applied to the case of childhood, all the rules of education will
follow.
A wise man understands how to remain in his own place; but a child, who
does not know his, cannot preserve it. As matters stand, there are a
thousand ways of leaving it. Those who govern him are to keep him in
it, and this is not an easy task. He ought to be neither an animal nor
a man, but a child. He should feel his weakness, and yet not suffer
from it. He should depend, not obey; he should demand, not command.
He is subject to others only by reason of his needs, and because others
see better than he what is useful to him, what will contribute to his
well-being or will impair it. No one, not even his father, has a right
to command a child to do what is of no use to him whatever.
Accustom the child to depend only on circumstances, and as his
education goes on, you will follow the order of nature. Never oppose
to his imprudent wishes anything but physical obstacles, or punishments
which arise from the actions themselves, and which he will remember
when the occasion comes. It is enough to prevent his doing harm,
without forbidding it. With him only experience, or want of power,
should take the place of law. Do not give him anything because he asks
for it, but because he needs it. When he acts, do not let him know
that it is from obedience; and when another acts for him, let him not
feel that he is exercising authority. Let him feel his liberty as much
in your actions as in his own. Add to the power he lacks exactly
enough to make him free and not imperious, so that, accepting your aid
with a kind of humiliation, he may aspire to the moment when he can
dispense with it, and have the honor of serving himself. For
strengthening the body and promoting its growth, nature has means which
ought never to be thwarted. A child ought not to be constrained to
stay anywhere when he wishes to go away, or to go away when he wishes
to stay. When their will is not spoiled by our own fault, children do
not wish for anything without good reason. They ought to leap, to run,
to shout, whenever they will. All their movements are necessities of
nature, which is endeavoring to strengthen itself. But we must take
heed of those wishes they cannot themselves accomplish, but must fulfil
by the hand of another. Therefore care should be taken to distinguish
the real wants, the wants of nature, from those which arise from fancy
or from the redundant life just mentioned.
I have already suggested what should be done when a child cries for
anything. I will only add that, as soon as he can ask in words for
what he wants, and, to obtain it sooner, or to overcome a refusal,
reinforces his request by crying, it should never be granted him. If
necessity has made him speak, you ought to know it, and at once to
grant what he demands. But yielding to his tears is encouraging him to
shed them: it teaches him to doubt your good will, and to believe that
importunity has more influence over you than your own kindness of heart
has.
If he does not believe you good, he will soon be bad; if he believes
you weak, he will soon be stubborn. It is of great importance that you
at once consent to what you do not intend to refuse him. Do not refuse
often, but never revoke a refusal.
Above all things, beware of teaching the child empty formulas of
politeness which shall serve him instead of magic words to subject to
his own wishes all who surround him, and to obtain instantly what he
likes. In the artificial education of the rich they are infallibly
made politely imperious, by having prescribed to them what terms to use
so that no one shall dare resist them. Such children have neither the
tones nor the speech of suppliants; they are as arrogant when they
request as when they command, and even more so, for in the former case
they are more sure of being obeyed. From the first it is readily seen
that, coming from them, "If you please" means "It pleases me"; and that
"I beg" signifies "I order you." Singular politeness this, by which
they only change the meaning of words, and so never speak but with
authority! For myself, I dread far less Emile's being rude than his
being arrogant. I would rather have him say "Do this" as if requesting
than "I beg you" as if commanding. I attach far less importance to the
term he uses than to the meaning he associates with it.
Over-strictness and over-indulgence are equally to be avoided. If you
let children suffer, you endanger their health and their life; you make
them actually wretched. If you carefully spare them every kind of
annoyance, you are storing up for them much unhappiness; you are making
them delicate and sensitive to pain; you are removing them from the
common lot of man, into which, in spite of all your care, they will one
day return. To save them some natural discomforts, you contrive for
them others which nature has not inflicted.
You will charge me with falling into the mistake of those fathers I
have reproached for sacrificing their children's happiness to
considerations of a far-away future that may never be. Not so; for the
freedom I give my pupil will amply supply him with the slight
discomforts to which I leave him exposed. I see the little rogues
playing in the snow, blue with cold, and scarcely able to move their
fingers. They have only to go and warm themselves, but they do nothing
of the kind. If they are compelled to do so, they feel the constraint
a hundred times more than they do the cold. Why then do you complain?
Shall I make your child unhappy if I expose him only to those
inconveniences he is perfectly willing to endure? By leaving him at
liberty, I do him service now; by arming him against the ills he must
encounter, I do him service for the time to come. If he could choose
between being my pupil or yours, do you think he would hesitate a
moment?
Can we conceive of any creature's being truly happy outside of what
belongs to its own peculiar nature? And if we would have a man exempt
from all human misfortunes, would it not estrange him from humanity?
Undoubtedly it would; for we are so constituted that to appreciate
great good fortune we must be acquainted with slight misfortunes. If
the body be too much at ease the moral nature becomes corrupted. The
man unacquainted with suffering would not know the tender feelings of
humanity or the sweetness of compassion; he would not be a social
being; he would be a monster among his kind.
The surest way to make a child unhappy is to accustom him to obtain
everything he wants to have. For, since his wishes multiply in
proportion to the ease with which they are gratified, your inability to
fulfil them will sooner or later oblige you to refuse in spite of
yourself, and this unwonted refusal will pain him more than withholding
from him what he demands. At first he will want the cane you hold;
soon he will want your watch; afterward he will want the bird he sees
flying, or the star he sees shining. He will want everything he sees,
and without being God himself how can you content him?
Man is naturally disposed to regard as his own whatever is within his
power. In this sense the principle of Hobbes is correct up to a
certain point; multiply with our desires the means of satisfying them,
and each of us will make himself master of everything. Hence the child
who has only to wish in order to obtain his wish, thinks himself the
owner of the universe. He regards all men as his slaves, and when at
last he must be denied something, he, believing everything possible
when he commands it, takes refusal for an act of rebellion. At his
age, incapable of reasoning, all reasons given seem to him only
pretexts. He sees ill-will in everything; the feeling of imagined
injustice embitters his temper; he begins to hate everybody, and
without ever being thankful for kindness, is angry at any opposition
whatever.
Who supposes that a child thus ruled by anger, a prey to furious
passions, can ever be happy? He happy? He is a tyrant; that is, the
vilest of slaves, and at the same time the most miserable of beings. I
have seen children thus reared who wanted those about them to push the
house down, to give them the weathercock they saw on a steeple, to stop
the march of a regiment so that they could enjoy the drum-beat a little
longer; and as soon as obedience to these demands was delayed they rent
the air with their screams, and would listen to no one. In vain
everybody tried eagerly to gratify them. The ease with which they
found their wishes obeyed stimulated them to desire more, and to be
stubborn about impossibilities. Everywhere they found only
contradictions, impediments, suffering, and sorrow. Always
complaining, always refractory, always angry, they spent the time in
crying and fretting; were these creatures happy? Authority and
weakness conjoined produce only madness and wretchedness. One of two
spoiled children beats the table, and the other has the sea lashed.[3]
They will have much to beat and to lash before they are satisfied with
life.
If these ideas of authority and of tyranny make them unhappy from their
very childhood, how will it be with them when they are grown, and when
their relations with others begin to be extended and multiplied?
Accustomed to seeing everything give way before them, how surprised
they will be on entering the world to find themselves crushed beneath
the weight of that universe they have expected to move at their own
pleasure! Their insolent airs and childish vanity will only bring upon
them mortification, contempt, and ridicule; they must swallow affront
after affront; cruel trials will teach them that they understand
neither their own position nor their own strength. Unable to do
everything, they will think themselves unable to do anything. So many
unusual obstacles dishearten them, so much contempt degrades them.
They become base, cowardly, cringing, and sink as far below their real
self as they had imagined themselves above it.
Let us return to the original order of things. Nature has made
children to be loved and helped; has she made them to be obeyed and
feared? Has she given them an imposing air, a stern eye, a harsh and
threatening voice, so that they may inspire fear? I can understand why
the roar of a lion fills other creatures with dread, and why they
tremble at sight of his terrible countenance. But if ever there were
an unbecoming, hateful, ridiculous spectacle, it is that of a body of
magistrates in their robes of ceremony, and headed by their chief,
prostrate before an infant in long clothes, who to their pompous
harangue replies only by screams or by childish drivel![4]
Considering infancy in itself, is there a creature on earth more
helpless, more unhappy, more at the mercy of everything around him,
more in need of compassion, of care, of protection, than a child? Does
it not seem as if his sweet face and touching aspect were intended to
interest every one who comes near him, and to urge them to assist his
weakness? What then is more outrageous, more contrary to the fitness
of things, than to see an imperious and headstrong child ordering about
those around him, impudently taking the tone of a master toward those
who, to destroy him, need only leave him to himself!
On the other hand, who does not see that since the weakness of infancy
fetters children in so many ways, we are barbarous if we add to this
natural subjection a bondage to our own caprices by taking from them
the limited freedom they have, a freedom they are so little able to
misuse, and from the loss of which we and they have so little to gain?
As nothing is more ridiculous than a haughty child, so nothing is more
pitiable than a cowardly child.
Since with years of reason civil bondage[5] begins, why anticipate it
by slavery at home? Let us leave one moment of life exempt from a yoke
nature has not laid upon us, and allow childhood the exercise of that
natural liberty which keeps it safe, at least for a time, from the
vices taught by slavery. Let the over-strict teacher and the
over-indulgent parent both come with their empty cavils, and before
they boast of their own methods let them learn the method of Nature
herself.
Reasoning should not begin too soon.
Locke's great maxim was that we ought to reason with children, and just
now this maxim is much in fashion. I think, however, that its success
does not warrant its reputation, and I find nothing more stupid than
children who have been so much reasoned with. Reason, apparently a
compound of all other faculties, the one latest developed, and with
most difficulty, is the one proposed as agent in unfolding the
faculties earliest used! The noblest work of education is to make a
reasoning man, and we expect to train a young child by making him
reason! This is beginning at the end; this is making an instrument of
a result. If children understood how to reason they would not need to
be educated. But by addressing them from their tenderest years in a
language they cannot understand, you accustom them to be satisfied with
words, to find fault with whatever is said to them, to think themselves
as wise as their teachers, to wrangle and rebel. And what we mean they
shall do from reasonable motives we are forced to obtain from them by
adding the motive of avarice, or of fear, or of vanity.
Nature intends that children shall be children before they are men. If
we insist on reversing this order we shall have fruit early indeed, but
unripe and tasteless, and liable to early decay; we shall have young
savants and old children. Childhood has its own methods of seeing,
thinking, and feeling. Nothing shows less sense than to try to
substitute our own methods for these. I would rather require a child
ten years old to be five feet tall than to be judicious. Indeed, what
use would he have at that age for the power to reason? It is a check
upon physical strength, and the child needs none.
In attempting to persuade your pupils to obedience you add to this
alleged persuasion force and threats, or worse still, flattery and
promises. Bought over in this way by interest, or constrained by
force, they pretend to be convinced by reason. They see plainly that
as soon as you discover obedience or disobedience in their conduct, the
former is an advantage and the latter a disadvantage to them. But you
ask of them only what is distasteful to them; it is always irksome to
carry out the wishes of another, so by stealth they carry out their
own. They are sure that if their disobedience is not known they are
doing well; but they are ready, for fear of greater evils, to
acknowledge, if found out, that they are doing wrong. As the reason
for the duty required is beyond their capacity, no one can make them
really understand it. But the fear of punishment, the hope of
forgiveness, your importunity, their difficulty in answering you,
extort from them the confession required of them. You think you have
convinced them, when you have only wearied them out or intimidated them.
What results from this? First of all that, by imposing upon them a
duty they do not feel as such, you set them against your tyranny, and
dissuade them from loving you; you teach them to be dissemblers,
deceitful, willfully untrue, for the sake of extorting rewards or of
escaping punishments. Finally, by habituating them to cover a secret
motive by an apparent motive, you give them the means of constantly
misleading you, of concealing their true character from you, and of
satisfying yourself and others with empty words when their occasion
demands. You may say that the law, although binding on the conscience,
uses constraint in dealing with grown men. I grant it; but what are
these men but children spoiled by their education? This is precisely
what ought to be prevented. With children use force, with men reason;
such is the natural order of things. The wise man requires no laws.
Well-Regulated Liberty.
Treat your pupil as his age demands. From the first, assign him to his
true place, and keep him there so effectually that he will not try to
leave it. Then, without knowing what wisdom is, he will practise its
most important lesson. Never, absolutely never, command him to do a
thing, whatever it may be.[6] Do not let him even imagine that you
claim any authority over him. Let him know only that he is weak and
you are strong: that from his condition and yours he is necessarily at
your mercy. Let him know this--learn it and feel it. Let him early
know that upon his haughty neck is the stern yoke nature imposes upon
man, the heavy yoke of necessity, under which every finite being must
toil.
Let him discover this necessity in the nature of things; never in human
caprice. Let the rein that holds him back be power, not authority. Do
not forbid, but prevent, his doing what he ought not; and in thus
preventing him use no explanations, give no reasons. What you grant
him, grant at the first asking without any urging, any entreaty from
him, and above all without conditions. Consent with pleasure and
refuse unwillingly, but let every refusal be irrevocable. Let no
importunity move you. Let the "No" once uttered be a wall of brass
against which the child will have to exhaust his strength only five or
six times before he ceases trying to overturn it.
In this way you will make him patient, even-tempered, resigned, gentle,
even when he has not what he wants. For it is in our nature to endure
patiently the decrees of fate, but not the ill-will of others. "There
is no more," is an answer against which no child ever rebelled unless
he believed it untrue. Besides, there is no other way; either nothing
at all is to be required of him, or he must from the first be
accustomed to perfect obedience. The worst training of all is to leave
him wavering between his own will and yours, and to dispute incessantly
with him as to which shall be master. I should a hundred times prefer
his being master in every case.
It is marvellous that in undertaking to educate a child no other means
of guiding him should have been devised than emulation, jealousy, envy,
vanity, greed, vile fear,--all of them passions most dangerous,
readiest to ferment, fittest to corrupt a soul, even before the body is
full-grown. For each instruction too early put into a child's head, a
vice is deeply implanted in his heart. Foolish teachers think they are
doing wonders when they make a child wicked, in order to teach him what
goodness is; and then they gravely tell us, "Such is man." Yes; such
is the man you have made.
All means have been tried save one, and that the very one which insures
success, namely, well-regulated freedom. We ought not to undertake a
child's education unless we know how to lead him wherever we please
solely by the laws of the possible and the impossible. The sphere of
both being alike unknown to him, we may extend or contract it around
him as we will. We may bind him down, incite him to action, restrain
him by the leash of necessity alone, and he will not murmur. We may
render him pliant and teachable by the force of circumstances alone,
without giving any vice an opportunity to take root within him. For
the passions never awake to life, so long as they are of no avail.
Do not give your pupil any sort of lesson verbally: he ought to receive
none except from experience. Inflict upon him no kind of punishment,
for he does not know what being in fault means; never oblige him to ask
pardon, for he does not know what it is to offend you.
His actions being without moral quality, he can do nothing which is
morally bad, or which deserves either punishment or reproof.[7]
Already I see the startled reader judging of this child by those around
us; but he is mistaken. The perpetual constraint under which you keep
your pupils increases their liveliness. The more cramped they are
while under your eye the more unruly they are the moment they escape
it. They must, in fact, make themselves amends for the severe
restraint you put upon them. Two school-boys from a city will do more
mischief in a community than the young people of a whole village.
Shut up in the same room a little gentleman and a little peasant; the
former will have everything upset and broken before the latter has
moved from his place. Why is this? Because the one hastens to misuse
a moment of liberty, and the other, always sure of his freedom, is
never in a hurry to use it. And yet the children of villagers, often
petted or thwarted, are still very far from the condition in which I
should wish to keep them.
Proceed Slowly.