obedience, it follows that they can learn nothing of which they cannot
understand the actual and immediate advantage, whether it be pleasant
or useful. Otherwise, what motive will induce them to learn it? The
art of conversing with absent persons, and of hearing from them, of
communicating to them at a distance, without the aid of another, our
feelings, intentions, and wishes, is an art whose value may be
explained to children of almost any age whatever. By what astonishing
process has this useful and agreeable art become so irksome to them?
They have been forced to learn it in spite of themselves, and to use it
in ways they cannot understand. A child is not anxious to perfect the
instrument used in tormenting him; but make the same thing minister to
his pleasures, and you cannot prevent him from using it.
Much attention is paid to finding out the best methods of teaching
children to read. We invent printing-offices and charts; we turn a
child's room into a printer's establishment.[15] Locke proposes
teaching children to read by means of dice; a brilliant contrivance
indeed, but a mistake as well. A better thing than all these, a thing
no one thinks of, is the desire to learn. Give a child this desire,
and you will not need dice or reading lotteries; any device will serve
as well. If, on the plan I have begun to lay down, you follow rules
exactly contrary to those most in fashion, you will not attract and
bewilder your pupil's attention by distant places, climates, and ages
of the world, going to the ends of the earth and into the very heavens
themselves, but will make a point of keeping it fixed upon himself and
what immediately concerns him; and by this plan you will find him
capable of perception, memory, and even reasoning; this is the order of
nature.[16] In proportion as a creature endowed with sensation becomes
active, it acquires discernment suited to its powers, and the surplus
of strength needed to preserve it is absolutely necessary in developing
that speculative faculty which uses the same surplus for other ends.
If, then, you mean to cultivate your pupil's understanding, cultivate
the strength it is intended to govern. Give him constant physical
exercise; make his body sound and robust, that you may make him wise
and reasonable. Let him be at work doing something; let him run,
shout, be always in motion; let him be a man in vigor, and he will the
sooner become one in reason.
You would indeed make a mere animal of him by this method if you are
continually directing him, and saying, "Go; come; stay; do this; stop
doing that." If your head is always to guide his arm, his own head
will be of no use to him. But recollect our agreement; if you are a
mere pedant, there is no use in your reading what I write.
To imagine that physical exercise injures mental operations is a
wretched mistake; the two should move in unison, and one ought to
regulate the other.
My pupil, or rather nature's pupil, trained from the first to depend as
much as possible on himself, is not continually running to others for
advice. Still less does he make a display of his knowledge. On the
other hand, he judges, he foresees, he reasons, upon everything that
immediately concerns him; he does not prate, but acts. He is little
informed as to what is going on in the world, but knows very well what
he ought to do, and how to do it. Incessantly in motion, he cannot
avoid observing many things, and knowing many effects. He early gains
a wide experience, and takes his lessons from nature, not from men. He
instructs himself all the better for discovering nowhere any intention
of instructing him. Thus, at the same time, body and mind are
exercised. Always carrying out his own ideas, and not another
person's, two processes are simultaneously going on within him. As he
grows robust and strong, he becomes intelligent and judicious.
In this way he will one day have those two excellences,--thought
incompatible indeed, but characteristic of nearly all great
men,--strength of body and strength of mind, the reason of a sage and
the vigor of an athlete.
I am recommending a difficult art to you, young teacher,--the art of
governing without rules, and of doing everything by doing nothing at
all. I grant, that at your age, this art is not to be expected of you.
It will not enable you, at the outset, to exhibit your shining talents,
or to make yourself prized by parents; but it is the only one that will
succeed. To be a sensible man, your pupil must first have been a
little scapegrace. The Spartans were educated in this way; not tied
down to books, but obliged to steal their dinners;[17] and did this
produce men inferior in understanding? Who does not remember their
forcible, pithy sayings? Trained to conquer, they worsted their
enemies in every kind of encounter; and the babbling Athenians dreaded
their sharp speeches quite as much as their valor.
In stricter systems of education, the teacher commands and thinks he is
governing the child, who is, after all, the real master. What you
exact from him he employs as means to get from you what he wants. By
one hour of diligence he can buy a week's indulgence. At every moment
you have to make terms with him. These bargains, which you propose in
your way, and which he fulfils in his own way, always turn out to the
advantage of his whims, especially when you are so careless as to make
stipulations which will be to his advantage whether he carries out his
share of the bargain or not. Usually, the child reads the teacher's
mind better than the teacher reads his. This is natural; for all the
sagacity the child at liberty would use in self-preservation he now
uses to protect himself from a tyrant's chains; while the latter,
having no immediate interest in knowing the child's mind, follows his
own advantage by leaving vanity and indolence unrestrained.
Do otherwise with your pupil. Let him always suppose himself master,
while you really are master. No subjection is so perfect as that which
retains the appearance of liberty; for thus the will itself is made
captive. Is not the helpless, unknowing child at your mercy? Do you
not, so far as he is concerned, control everything around him? Have
you not power to influence him as you please? Are not his work, his
play, his pleasure, his pain, in your hands, whether he knows it or not?
Doubtless he ought to do only what he pleases; but your choice ought to
control his wishes. He ought to take no step that you have not
directed; he ought not to open his lips without your knowing what he is
about to say.
In this case he may, without fear of debasing his mind, devote himself
to exercises of the body. Instead of sharpening his wits to escape an
irksome subjection, you will observe him wholly occupied in finding out
in everything around him that part best adapted to his present
well-being. You will be amazed at the subtilty of his contrivances for
appropriating to himself all the objects within the reach of his
understanding, and for enjoying everything without regard to other
people's opinions.
By thus leaving him free, you will not foster his caprices. If he
never does anything that does not suit him, he will soon do only what
he ought to do. And, although his body be never at rest, still, if he
is caring for his present and perceptible interests, all the reason of
which he is capable will develop far better and more appropriately than
in studies purely speculative.
As he does not find you bent on thwarting him, does not distrust you,
has nothing to hide from you, he will not deceive you or tell you lies.
He will fearlessly show himself to you just as he is. You may study
him entirely at your ease, and plan lessons for him which he will all
unconsciously receive.
He will not pry with suspicious curiosity into your affairs, and feel
pleasure when he finds you in fault. This is one of our most serious
disadvantages. As I have said, one of a child's first objects is to
discover the weaknesses of those who have control of him. This
disposition may produce ill-nature, but does not arise from it, but
from their desire to escape an irksome bondage. Oppressed by the yoke
laid upon them, children endeavor to shake it off; and the faults they
find in their teachers yield them excellent means for doing this. But
they acquire the habit of observing faults in others, and of enjoying
such discoveries. This source of evil evidently does not exist in
Emile. Having no interest to serve by discovering my faults, he will
not look for them in me, and will have little temptation to seek them
in other people.
This course of conduct seems difficult because we do not reflect upon
it; but taking it altogether, it ought not to be so. I am justified in
supposing that you know enough to understand the business you have
undertaken; that you know the natural progress of the human mind; that
you understand studying mankind in general and in individual cases;
that among all the objects interesting to his age that you mean to show
your pupil, you know beforehand which of them will influence his will.
Now if you have the appliances, and know just how to use them, are you
not master of the operation?
You object that children have caprices, but in this you are mistaken.
These caprices result from faulty discipline, and are not natural. The
children have been accustomed either to obey or to command, and I have
said a hundred times that neither of these two things is necessary.
Your pupil will therefore have only such caprices as you give him, and
it is just you should be punished for your own faults. But do you ask
how these are to be remedied? It can still be done by means of better
management and much patience.
Physical Training.
Man's first natural movements are for the purpose of comparing himself
with whatever surrounds him and finding in each thing those sensible
qualities likely to affect himself. His first study is, therefore, a
kind of experimental physics relating to his own preservation. From
this, before he has fully understood his place here on earth, he is
turned aside to speculative studies. While yet his delicate and
pliable organs can adapt themselves to the objects upon which they are
to act, while his senses, still pure, are free from illusion, it is
time to exercise both in their peculiar functions, and to learn the
perceptible relations between ourselves and outward things. Since
whatever enters the human understanding enters by the senses, man's
primitive reason is a reason of the senses, serving as foundation for
the reason of the intellect. Our first teachers in philosophy are our
own feet, hands, and eyes. To substitute books for these is teaching
us not to reason, but to use the reason of another; to believe a great
deal, and to know nothing at all.
In practising an art we must begin by procuring apparatus for it; and
to use this apparatus to advantage, we must have it solid enough to
bear use. In learning to think, we must therefore employ our members,
our senses, our organs, all which are the apparatus of our
understanding. And to use them to the best advantage, the body which
furnishes them must be sound and robust. Our reason is therefore so
far from being independent of the body, that a good constitution
renders mental operations easy and accurate. In indicating how the
long leisure of childhood ought to be employed, I am entering into
particulars which maybe thought ridiculous. "Pretty lessons," you will
tell me, "which you yourself criticize for teaching only what there is
no need of learning! Why waste time in instructions which always come
of their own accord, and cost neither care nor trouble? What child of
twelve does not know all you are going to teach yours, and all that his
masters have taught him besides?"
Gentlemen, you are mistaken. I am teaching my pupil a very tedious and
difficult art, which yours certainly have not acquired,--that of being
ignorant. For the knowledge of one who gives himself credit for
knowing only what he really does know reduces itself to a very small
compass. You are teaching science: very good; I am dealing with the
instrument by which science is acquired. All who have reflected upon
the mode of life among the ancients attribute to gymnastic exercises
that vigor of body and mind which so notably distinguishes them from us
moderns. Montaigne's support of this opinion shows that he had fully
adopted it; he returns to it again and again, in a thousand ways.
Speaking of the education of a child, he says, "We must make his mind
robust by hardening his muscles; inure him to pain by accustoming him
to labor; break him by severe exercise to the keen pangs of
dislocation, of colic, of other ailments." The wise Locke,[18] the
excellent Rollin,[19] the learned Fleury,[20] the pedantic de
Crouzas,[21] so different in everything else, agree exactly on this
point of abundant physical exercise for children. It is the wisest
lesson they ever taught, but the one that is and always will be most
neglected.
Clothing.
As to clothing, the limbs of a growing body should be entirely free.
Nothing should cramp their movements or their growth; nothing should
fit too closely or bind the body; there should be no ligatures
whatever. The present French dress cramps and disables even a man, and
is especially injurious to children. It arrests the circulation of the
humors; they stagnate from an inaction made worse by a sedentary life.
This corruption of the humors brings on the scurvy, a disease becoming
every day more common among us, but unknown to the ancients, protected
from it by their dress and their mode of life. The hussar dress does
not remedy this inconvenience, but increases it, since, to save the
child a few ligatures, it compresses the entire body. It would be
better to keep children in frocks as long as possible, and then put
them into loosely fitting clothes, without trying to shape their
figures and thereby spoil them. Their defects of body and of mind
nearly all spring from the same cause: we are trying to make men of
them before their time.
Of bright and dull colors, the former best please a child's taste; such
colors are also most becoming to them; and I see no reason why we
should not in such matters consult these natural coincidences. But the
moment a material is preferred because it is richer, the child's mind
is corrupted by luxury, and by all sorts of whims. Preferences like
this do not spring up of their own accord. It is impossible to say how
much choice of dress and the motives of this choice influence
education. Not only do thoughtless mothers promise children fine
clothes by way of reward, but foolish tutors threaten them with coarser
and simpler dress as punishment. "If you do not study your lessons, if
you do not take better care of your clothes, you shall be dressed like
that little rustic." This is saying to him, "Rest assured that a man
is nothing but what his clothes make him; your own worth depends on
what you wear." Is it surprising that sage lessons like this so
influence young men that they care for nothing but ornament, and judge
of merit by outward appearance only?
Generally, children are too warmly clothed, especially in their earlier
years. They should be inured to cold rather than heat; severe cold
never incommodes them when they encounter it early. But the tissue of
their skin, as yet yielding and tender, allows too free passage to
perspiration, and exposure to great heat invariably weakens them. It
has been observed that more children die in August than in any other
month. Besides, if we compare northern and southern races, we find
that excessive cold, rather than excessive heat, makes man robust. In
proportion as the child grows and his fibres are strengthened, accustom
him gradually to withstand heat; and by degrees you will without risk
train him to endure the glowing temperature of the torrid zone.
Sleep.
Children need a great deal of sleep because they take a great deal of
exercise. The one acts as corrective to the other, so that both are
necessary. As nature teaches us, night is the time for rest. Constant
observation shows that sleep is softer and more profound while the sun
is below the horizon. The heated air does not so perfectly
tranquillize our tired senses. For this reason the most salutary habit
is to rise and to go to rest with the sun. In our climate man, and
animals generally, require more sleep in winter than in summer. But
our mode of life is not so simple, natural, and uniform that we can
make this regular habit a necessity. We must without doubt submit to
regulations; but it is most important that we should be able to break
them without risk when occasion requires. Do not then imprudently
soften your pupil by letting him lie peacefully asleep without ever
being disturbed. At first let him yield without restraint to the law
of nature, but do not forget that in our day we must be superior to
this law; we must be able to go late to rest and rise early, to be
awakened suddenly, to be up all night, without discomfort. By
beginning early, and by always proceeding slowly, we form the
constitution by the very practices which would ruin it if it were
already established.
It is important that your pupil should from the first be accustomed to
a hard bed, so that he may find none uncomfortable.
Generally, a life of hardship, when we are used to it, gives us a far
greater number of agreeable sensations than does a life of ease, which
creates an infinite number of unpleasant ones. One too delicately
reared can find sleep only upon a bed of down; one accustomed to bare
boards can find it anywhere. No bed is hard to him who falls asleep as
soon as his head touches the pillow. The best bed is the one which
brings the best sleep. Throughout the day no slaves from Persia, but
Emile and I, will prepare our beds. When we are tilling the ground we
shall be making them soft for our slumber.
Exercise of the Senses.
A child has not a man's stature, strength, or reason; but he sees and
hears almost or quite as well. His sense of taste is as keen, though
he does not enjoy it as a pleasure.
Our senses are the first powers perfected in us. They are the first
that should be cultivated and the only ones forgotten, or at least, the
most neglected.
To exercise the senses is not merely to use them, but to learn how to
judge correctly by means of them; we may say, to learn how to feel.
For we cannot feel, or hear, or see, otherwise than as we have been
taught.
There is a kind of exercise, purely natural and mechanical, that
renders the body robust without injuring the mind. Of this description
are swimming, running, leaping, spinning tops, and throwing stones.
All these are well enough; but have we nothing but arms and legs? Have
we not eyes and ears as well? and are they of no use while the others
are employed? Use, then, not only your bodily strength, but all the
senses which direct it. Make as much of each as possible, and verify
the impressions of one by those of another. Measure, count, weigh, and
compare. Use no strength till after you have calculated the resistance
it will meet. Be careful to estimate the effect before you use the
means. Interest the child in never making any useless or inadequate
trials of strength. If you accustom him to forecast the effect of
every movement, and to correct his errors by experience, is it not
certain that the more he does the better his judgment will be?
If the lever he uses in moving a heavy weight be too long, he will
expend too much motion; if too short, he will not have power enough.
Experience will teach him to choose one exactly suitable. Such
practical knowledge, then, is not beyond his years. If he wishes to
carry a burden exactly as heavy as his strength will bear, without the
test of first lifting it, must he not estimate its weight by the eye?
If he understands comparing masses of the same material but of
different size, let him choose between masses of the same size but of
different material. This will oblige him to compare them as to
specific gravity. I have seen a well-educated young man who, until he
had tried the experiment, would not believe that a pail full of large
chips weighs less than it does when full of water.
The Sense of Touch.
We have not equal control of all our senses. One of them, the sense of
touch, is in continual action so long as we are awake. Diffused over
the entire surface of the body, it serves as a perpetual sentinel to
warn us of what is likely to harm us. By the constant use of this
sense, voluntary or otherwise, we gain our earliest experience. It
therefore stands less in need of special cultivation. We observe
however, that the blind have a more delicate and accurate touch than
we, because, not having sight to guide them, they depend upon touch for
the judgments we form with the aid of sight. Why then do we not train
ourselves to walk, like them, in the dark, to recognize by the touch
all bodies we can reach, to judge of objects around us, in short, to do
by night and in the dark all they do in daytime without eyesight? So
long as the sun shines, we have the advantage of them; but they can
guide us in darkness. We are blind during half our life-time, with
this difference, that the really blind can always guide themselves,
whereas we dare not take a step in the dead of night. You may remind
me that we have artificial light. What! must we always use machines?
Who can insure their being always at hand when we need them? For my
part, I prefer that Emile, instead of keeping his eyes in a chandler's
shop, should have them at the ends of his fingers.
As much as possible, let him be accustomed to play about at night.
This advice is more important than it would seem. For men, and
sometimes for animals, night has naturally its terrors. Rarely do
wisdom, or wit, or courage, free us from paying tribute to these
terrors. I have seen reasoners, free-thinkers, philosophers, soldiers,
who were utterly fearless in broad daylight, tremble like women at the
rustle of leaves by night. Such terrors are supposed to be the result
of nursery tales. The real cause is the same thing which makes the
deaf distrustful, and the lower classes superstitious; and that is,
ignorance of objects and events around us.
The cause of the evil, once found, suggests the remedy. In everything,
habit benumbs the imagination; new objects alone quicken it again.
Every-day objects keep active not the imagination, but the memory;
whence the saying "Ab assuetis non fit passio."[22] For only the
imagination can set on fire our passions. If, therefore, you wish to
cure any one of the fear of darkness, do not reason with him. Take him
into the dark often, and you may be sure that will do him more good
than philosophical arguments. When at work on the roofs of houses,
slaters do not feel their heads swim; and those accustomed to darkness
do not fear it at all.
There will be one advantage of our plays in the dark. But if you mean
them to be successful, you must make them as gay as possible. Darkness
is of all things the most gloomy; so do not shut your child up in a
dungeon. When he goes into the dark make him laugh; when he leaves it
make him laugh again; and all the time he is there, let the thought of
what he is enjoying, and what he will find there when he returns,
protect him from the shadowy terrors which might otherwise inhabit it.