rather have them good than knowing, we shall not exact the truth from
them at all, lest they disguise it; we will require of them no promises
they may be tempted to break. If in my absence some anonymous mischief
has been done, I will beware of accusing Emile, or of asking "Was it
you?"[8] For what would that be but teaching him to deny it? If his
naturally troublesome disposition obliges me to make some agreement
with him, I will plan so well that any such proposal shall come from
him and never from me. Thus, whenever he is bound by an engagement he
shall have an immediate and tangible interest in fulfilling it. And if
he ever fails in this, the falsehood shall bring upon him evil results
which he sees must arise from the very nature of things, and never from
the vengeance of his tutor. Far from needing recourse to such severe
measures, however, I am almost sure that Emile will be long in learning
what a lie is, and upon finding it out will be greatly amazed, not
understanding what is to be gained by it. It is very plain that the
more I make his welfare independent of either the will or the judgment
of others, the more I uproot within him all interest in telling
falsehoods.
When we are less eager to instruct we are also less eager to exact
requirements from our pupil, and can take time to require only what is
to the purpose. In that case, the child will be developed, just
because he is not spoiled. But when some blockhead teacher, not
understanding what he is about, continually forces the child to promise
things, making no distinctions, allowing no choice, knowing no limit,
the little fellow, worried and weighed down with all these obligations,
neglects them, forgets them, at last despises them; and considering
them mere empty formulas, turns the giving and the breaking of them
into ridicule. If then you want to make him faithful to his word, be
discreet in requiring him to give it.
The details just entered upon in regard to falsehood may apply in many
respects to all duties which, when enjoined upon children, become to
them not only hateful but impracticable. In order to seem to preach
virtue we make vices attractive, and actually impart them by forbidding
them. If we would have the children religious, we tire them out taking
them to church. By making them mumble prayers incessantly we make them
sigh for the happiness of never praying at all. To inspire charity in
them, we make them give alms, as if we disdained doing it ourselves.
It is not the child, but his teacher, who ought to do the giving.
However much you love your pupil, this is an honor you ought to dispute
with him, leading him to feel that he is not yet old enough to deserve
it.
Giving alms is the act of one who knows the worth of his gift, and his
fellow-creature's need of the gift. A child who knows nothing of
either can have no merit in bestowing. He gives without charity or
benevolence: he is almost ashamed to give at all, as, judging from your
example and his own, only children give alms, and leave it off when
grown up. Observe, that we make the child bestow only things whose
value be does not know: pieces of metal, which he carries in his
pocket, and which are good for nothing else. A child would rather give
away a hundred gold pieces than a single cake. But suggest to this
free-handed giver the idea of parting with what he really prizes--his
playthings, his sugar-plums, or his luncheon; you will soon find out
whether you have made him really generous.
To accomplish the same end, resort is had to another expedient, that of
instantly returning to the child what he has given away, so that he
habitually gives whatever he knows will be restored to him. I have
rarely met with other than these two kinds of generosity in children,
namely, the giving either of what is no use to themselves, or else of
what they are certain will come back to them.
"Do this," says Locke, "that they may be convinced by experience that
he who gives most generously has always the better portion." This is
making him liberal in appearance and miserly in reality. He adds, that
children will thus acquire the habit of generosity.
Yes; a miser's generosity, giving an egg to gain an ox. But when
called upon to be generous in earnest, good-bye to the habit; they soon
cease giving when the gift no longer comes back to them. We ought to
keep in view the habit of mind rather than that of the hands. Like
this virtue are all others taught to children; and their early years
are spent in sadness, that we may preach these sterling virtues to
them! Excellent training this!
Lay aside all affectation, you teachers; be yourselves good and
virtuous, so that your example may be deeply graven on your pupils'
memory until such time as it finds lodgment in their heart. Instead of
early requiring acts of charity from my pupil I would rather do them in
his presence, taking from him all means of imitating me, as if I
considered it an honor not due to his age. For he should by no means
be in the habit of thinking a man's duties the same as a child's.
Seeing me assist the poor, he questions me about it and, if occasion
serve, I answer, "My boy, it is because, since poor people are willing
there should be rich people, the rich have promised to take care of
those who have no money or cannot earn a living by their labor."
"And have you promised it too?" inquires he.
"Of course; the money that comes into my hands is mine to use only upon
this condition, which its owner has to carry out."
After this conversation, and we have seen how a child may be prepared
to understand it, other children besides Emile would be tempted to
imitate me by acting like a rich man. In this case I would at least
see that it should not be done ostentatiously. I would rather have him
rob me of my right, and conceal the fact of his generosity. It would
be a stratagem natural at his age, and the only one I would pardon in
him.
The only moral lesson suited to childhood and the most important at any
age is, never to injure any one. Even the principle of doing good, if
not subordinated to this, is dangerous, false, and contradictory. For
who does not do good? Everybody does, even a wicked man who makes one
happy at the expense of making a hundred miserable: and thence arise
all our calamities. The most exalted virtues are negative: they are
hardest to attain, too, because they are unostentatious, and rise above
even that gratification dear to the heart of man,--sending another
person away pleased with us. If there be a man who never injures one
of his fellow-creatures, what good must he achieve for them! What
fearlessness, what vigor of mind he requires for it! Not by reasoning
about this principle, but by attempting to carry it into practice, do
we find out how great it is, how hard to fulfil.
The foregoing conveys some faint idea of the precautions I would have
you employ in giving children the instructions we sometimes cannot
withhold without risk of their injuring themselves or others, and
especially of contracting bad habits of which it will by and by be
difficult to break them. But we may rest assured that in children
rightly educated the necessity will seldom arise; for it is impossible
that they should become intractable, vicious, deceitful, greedy, unless
the vices which make them so are sowed in their hearts. For this
reason what has been said on this point applies rather to exceptional
than to ordinary cases. But such exceptional cases become common in
proportion as children have more frequent opportunity to depart from
their natural state and to acquire the vices of their seniors. Those
brought up among men of the world absolutely require earlier teaching
in these matters than those educated apart from such surroundings.
Hence this private education is to be preferred, even if it do no more
than allow childhood leisure to grow to perfection.
Negative or Temporizing Education.
Exactly contrary to the cases just described are those whom a happy
temperament exalts above their years. As there are some men who never
outgrow childhood, so there are others who never pass through it, but
are men almost from their birth. The difficulty is that these
exceptional cases are rare and not easily distinguished; besides, all
mothers capable of understanding that a child can be a prodigy, have no
doubt that their own are such. They go even farther than this: they
take for extraordinary indications the sprightliness, the bright
childish pranks and sayings, the shrewd simplicity of ordinary cases,
characteristic of that time of life, and showing plainly that a child
is only a child. Is it surprising that, allowed to speak so much and
so freely, unrestrained by any consideration of propriety, a child
should occasionally make happy replies? If he did not, it would be
even more surprising; just as if an astrologer, among a hundred false
predictions, should never hit upon a single true one. "They lie so
often," said Henry IV., "that they end by telling the truth." To be a
wit, one need only utter a great many foolish speeches. Heaven help
men of fashion, whose reputation rests upon just this foundation!
The most brilliant thoughts may enter a child's head, or rather, the
most brilliant sayings may fall from his lips, just as the most
valuable diamonds may fall into his hands, without his having any right
either to the thoughts or to the diamonds. At his age, he has no real
property of any kind. A child's utterances are not the same to him as
to us; he does not attach to them the same ideas. If he has any ideas
at all on the subject, they have neither order nor coherence in his
mind; in all his thoughts nothing is certain or stable. If you watch
your supposed prodigy attentively, you will sometimes find him a
well-spring of energy, clear-sighted, penetrating the very marrow of
things. Much oftener the same mind appears commonplace, dull, and as
if enveloped in a dense fog. Sometimes he outruns you, and sometimes
he stands still. At one moment you feel like saying, "He is a genius,"
and at another, "He is a fool." You are mistaken in either case: he is
a child; he is an eaglet that one moment beats the air with its wings,
and the next moment falls back into the nest.
In spite of appearances, then, treat him as his age demands, and beware
lest you exhaust his powers by attempting to use them too freely. If
this young brain grows warm, if you see it beginning to seethe, leave
it free to ferment, but do not excite it, lest it melt altogether into
air. When the first flow of spirits has evaporated, repress and keep
within bounds the rest, until, as time goes on, the whole is
transformed into life-giving warmth and real power. Otherwise you will
lose both time and pains; you will destroy your own handiwork, and
after having thoughtlessly intoxicated yourself with all these
inflammable vapors, you will have nothing left but the dregs.
Nothing has been more generally or certainly observed than that dull
children make commonplace men. In childhood it is very difficult to
distinguish real dullness from that misleading apparent dullness which
indicates a strong character. At first it seems strange that the two
extremes should meet in indications so much alike; and yet such is the
case. For at an age when man has no real ideas at all, the difference
between one who has genius and one who has not is, that the latter
entertains only mistaken ideas, and the former, encountering only such,
admits none at all. The two are therefore alike in this, that the
dullard is capable of nothing, and the other finds nothing to suit him.
The only means of distinguishing them is chance, which may bring to the
genius some ideas he can comprehend, while the dull mind is always the
same.
During his childhood the younger Cato was at home considered an idiot.
No one said anything of him beyond that he was silent and headstrong.
It was only in the antechamber of Sulla that his uncle learned to know
him. If he had never crossed its threshold, he might have been thought
a fool until he was grown. If there had been no such person as Caesar,
this very Cato, who read the secret of Caesar's fatal genius, and from
afar foresaw his ambitious designs, would always have been treated as a
visionary.[9] Those who judge of children so hastily are very liable
to be mistaken. They are often more childish than the children
themselves.
Concerning the Memory.
Respect children, and be in no haste to judge their actions, good or
evil. Let the exceptional cases show themselves such for some time
before you adopt special methods of dealing with them. Let nature be
long at work before you attempt to supplant her, lest you thwart her
work. You say you know how precious time is, and do not wish to lose
it. Do you not know that to employ it badly is to waste it still more,
and that a child badly taught is farther from being wise than one not
taught at all? You are troubled at seeing him spend his early years in
doing nothing. What! is it nothing to be happy? Is it nothing to
skip, to play, to run about all day long? Never in all his life will
he be so busy as now. Plato, in that work of his considered so severe,
the "Republic," would have children accustomed to festivals, games,
songs, and pastimes; one would think he was satisfied with having
carefully taught them how to enjoy themselves. And Seneca, speaking of
the Roman youth of old, says, "They were always standing; nothing was
taught them that they had to learn when seated." Were they of less
account when they reached manhood? Have no fear, then, of this
supposed idleness. What would you think of a man who, in order to use
his whole life to the best advantage, would not sleep? You would say,
"The man has no sense; he does not enjoy life, but robs himself of it.
To avoid sleep, he rushes on his death." The two cases are parallel,
for childhood is the slumber of reason.
Apparent quickness in learning is the ruin of children. We do not
consider that this very quickness proves that they are learning
nothing. Their smooth and polished brain reflects like a mirror the
objects presented to it, but nothing abides there, nothing penetrates
it. The child retains the words; the ideas are reflected; they who
hear understand them, but he himself does not understand them at all.
Although memory and reason are two essentially different faculties, the
one is never really developed without the other. Before the age of
reason, the child receives not ideas, but images. There is this
difference between the two, that images are only absolute
representations of objects of sense, and ideas are notions of objects
determined by their relations. An image may exist alone in the mind
that represents it, but every idea supposes other ideas. When we
imagine, we only see; when we conceive of things, we compare them. Our
sensations are entirely passive, whereas all our perceptions or ideas
spring from an active principle which judges.
I say then that children, incapable of judging, really have no memory.
They retain sounds, shapes, sensations; but rarely ideas, and still
more rarely the relations of ideas to one another. If this statement
is apparently refuted by the objection that they learn some elements of
geometry, it is not really true; that very fact confirms my statement.
It shows that, far from knowing how to reason themselves, they cannot
even keep in mind the reasonings of others. For if you investigate the
method of these little geometricians, you discover at once that they
have retained only the exact impression of the diagram and the words of
the demonstration. Upon the least new objection they are puzzled.
Their knowledge is only of the sensation; nothing has become the
property of their understanding. Even their memory is rarely more
perfect than their other faculties: for when grown they have nearly
always to learn again as realities things whose names they learned in
childhood.
However, I am far from thinking that children have no power of
reasoning whatever.[10] I observe, on the contrary, that in things
they understand, things relating to their present and manifest
interests, they reason extremely well. We are, however, liable to be
misled as to their knowledge, attributing to them what they do not
have, and making them reason about what they do not understand. Again,
we make the mistake of calling their attention to considerations by
which they are in no wise affected, such as their future interests, the
happiness of their coming manhood, the opinion people will have of them
when they are grown up. Such speeches, addressed to minds entirely
without foresight, are absolutely unmeaning. Now all the studies
forced upon these poor unfortunates deal with things like this, utterly
foreign to their minds. You may judge what attention such subjects are
likely to receive.
On the Study of Words.
Pedagogues, who make such an imposing display of what they teach, are
paid to talk in another strain than mine, but their conduct shows that
they think as I do. For after all, what do they teach their pupils?
Words, words, words. Among all their boasted subjects, none are
selected because they are useful; such would be the sciences of things,
in which these professors are unskilful. But they prefer sciences we
seem to know when we know their nomenclature, such as heraldry,
geography, chronology, languages; studies so far removed from human
interests, and particularly from the child, that it would be wonderful
if any of them could be of the least use at any time in life.
It may cause surprise that I account the study of languages one of the
useless things in education. But remember I am speaking of the studies
of earlier years, and whatever may be said, I do not believe that any
child except a prodigy, will ever learn two languages by the time he is
twelve or fifteen.[11]
I admit that if the study of languages were only that of words, that
is, of forms, and of the sounds which express them, it might be
suitable for children. But languages, by changing their signs, modify
also the ideas they represent. Minds are formed upon languages;
thoughts take coloring from idioms. Reason alone is common to all. In
each language the mind has its peculiar conformation, and this may be
in part the cause or the effect of national character. The fact that
every nation's language follows the vicissitudes of that nation's
morals, and is preserved or altered with them, seems to confirm this
theory.
Of these different forms, custom gives one to the child, and it is the
only one he retains until the age of reason. In order to have two, he
must be able to compare ideas; and how can he do this when he is
scarcely able to grasp them? Each object may for him have a thousand
different signs, but each idea can have but one form; he can therefore
learn to speak only one language. It is nevertheless maintained that
he learns several; this I deny. I have seen little prodigies who
thought they could speak six or seven: I have heard them speak German
in Latin, French, and Italian idioms successively. They did indeed use
five or six vocabularies, but they never spoke anything but German. In
short, you may give children as many synonyms as you please, and you
will change only their words, and not their language; they will never
know more than one.
To hide this inability we, by preference, give them practice in the
dead languages, of which there are no longer any unexceptionable
judges. The familiar use of these tongues having long been lost, we
content ourselves with imitating what we find of them in books, and
call this speaking them. If such be the Greek and Latin of the
masters, you may judge what that of the children is. Scarcely have
they learned by heart the rudiments, without in the least understanding
them, before they are taught to utter a French discourse in Latin
words; and, when further advanced, to string together in prose, phrases
from Cicero and cantos from Virgil. Then they imagine they are
speaking Latin, and who is there to contradict them?[12]
In any study, words that represent things are nothing without the ideas
of the things they represent. We, however, limit children to these
signs, without ever being able to make them understand the things
represented. We think we are teaching a child the description of the
earth, when he is merely learning maps. We teach him the names of
cities, countries, rivers; he has no idea that they exist anywhere but
on the map we use in pointing them out to him. I recollect seeing
somewhere a text-book on geography which began thus:
"What is the world? A pasteboard globe." Precisely such is the
geography of children. I will venture to say that after two years of
globes and cosmography no child of ten, by rules they give him, could
find the way from Paris to St. Denis. I maintain that not one of them,
from a plan of his father's garden, could trace out its windings
without going astray. And yet these are the knowing creatures who can
tell you exactly where Pekin, Ispahan, Mexico, and all the countries of
the world are.
I hear it suggested that children ought to be engaged in studies in
which only the eye is needed. This might be true if there were studies
in which their eyes were not needed; but I know of none such.
A still more ridiculous method obliges children to study history,
supposed to be within their comprehension because it is only a
collection of facts.[13] But what do we mean by facts? Do we suppose
that the relations out of which historic facts grow are so easily
understood that the minds of children grasp such ideas without
difficulty? Do we imagine that the true understanding of events can be
separated from that of their causes and effects? and that the historic
and the moral are so far asunder that the one can be understood without
the other? If in men's actions you see only purely external and
physical changes, what do you learn from history? Absolutely nothing;
and the subject, despoiled of all interest, no longer gives you either
pleasure or instruction. If you intend to estimate actions by their
moral relations, try to make your pupils understand these relations,
and you will discover whether history is adapted to their years.
If there is no science in words, there is no study especially adapted
to children. If they have no real ideas, they have no real memory; for
I do not call that memory which retains only impressions. Of what use
is it to write on their minds a catalogue of signs that represent
nothing to them? In learning the things represented, would they not
also learn the signs? Why do you give them the useless trouble of
learning them twice? Besides, you create dangerous prejudices by
making them suppose that science consists of words meaningless to them.
The first mere word with which the child satisfies himself, the first
thing he learns on the authority of another person, ruins his judgment.
Long must he shine in the eyes of unthinking persons before he can
repair such an injury to himself.
No; nature makes the child's brain so yielding that it receives all
kinds of impressions; not that we may make his childhood a distressing
burden to him by engraving on that brain dates, names of kings,
technical terms in heraldry, mathematics, geography, and all such
words, unmeaning to him and unnecessary to persons at any age in life.
But all ideas that he can understand, and that are of use to him, all
that conduce to his happiness and that will one day make his duties
plain, should early write themselves there indelibly, to guide him
through life as his condition and his intellect require.
The memory of which a child is capable is far from inactive, even
without the use of books. All he sees and hears impresses him, and he
remembers it. He keeps a mental register of people's sayings and
doings. Everything around him is the book from which he is continually
but unconsciously enriching his memory against the time his judgment
can benefit by it. If we intend rightly to cultivate this chief
faculty of the mind, we must choose these objects carefully, constantly
acquainting him with such as he ought to understand, and keeping back
those he ought not to know. In this way we should endeavor to make his
mind a storehouse of knowledge, to aid in his education in youth, and
to direct him at all times. This method does not, it is true, produce
phenomenal children, nor does it make the reputation of their teachers;
but it produces judicious, robust men, sound in body and in mind, who,
although not admired in youth, will make themselves respected in
manhood.
Emile shall never learn anything by heart, not even fables such as
those of La Fontaine, simple and charming as they are. For the words
of fables are no more the fables themselves than the words of history
are history itself. How can we be so blind as to call fables moral
lessons for children? We do not reflect that while these stories amuse
they also mislead children, who, carried away by the fiction, miss the
truth conveyed; so that what makes the lesson agreeable also makes it
less profitable. Men may learn from fables, but children must be told
the bare truth; if it be veiled, they do not trouble themselves to lift
the veil.[14]