willingly pardon this child," said he; "he has offended only through
ignorance. But you, sir, must have known the nature of his fault; why
did you allow him to commit such a fault? Since you live together,
you, who are older, ought to have taken the trouble of advising him;
the authority of your experience should have guided him. When he is
old enough to reproach you for his childish errors, he will certainly
blame you for those of which you did not warn him."[4]
He went away, leaving us greatly abashed. I took upon myself the blame
of my easy compliance, and promised the child that, another time, I
would sacrifice it to his interest, and warn him of his faults before
they were committed. For a time was coming when our relations would be
changed, and the severity of the tutor must succeed to the complaisance
of an equal. This change should be gradual; everything must be
foreseen, and that long beforehand.
The following day we returned to the fair, to see once more the trick
whose secret we had learned. We approached our juggling Socrates with
deep respect, hardly venturing to look at him. He overwhelmed us with
civilities, and seated us with a marked attention which added to our
humiliation. He performed his tricks as usual, but took pains to amuse
himself for a long time with the duck trick, often looking at us with a
rather defiant air. We understood it perfectly, and did not breathe a
syllable. If my pupil had even dared to open his mouth, he would have
deserved to be annihilated.
All the details of this illustration are far more important than they
appear. How many lessons are here combined in one! How many
mortifying effects does the first feeling of vanity bring upon us!
Young teachers, watch carefully its first manifestation. If you can
thus turn it into humiliation and disgrace, be assured that a second
lesson will not soon be necessary.
"What an amount of preparation!" you will say. True; and all to make
us a compass to use instead of a meridian line!
Having learned that a magnet acts through other bodies, we were all
impatience until we had made an apparatus like the one we had seen,--a
hollow table-top with a very shallow basin adjusted upon it and filled
with water, a duck rather more carefully made, and so on. Watching
this apparatus attentively and often, we finally observed that the
duck, when at rest, nearly always turned in the same direction.
Following up the experiment by examining this direction, we found it to
be from south to north. Nothing more was necessary; our compass was
invented, or might as well have been. We had begun to study physics.
Experimental Physics.
The earth has different climates, and these have different
temperatures. As we approach the poles the variation of seasons is
more perceptible,--all bodies contract with cold and expand with heat.
This effect is more readily measured in liquids, and is particularly
noticeable in spirituous liquors. This fact suggested the idea of the
thermometer. The wind strikes our faces; air is therefore a body, a
fluid; we feel it though we cannot see it. Turn a glass vessel upside
down in water, and the water will not fill it unless you leave a vent
for the air; therefore air is capable of resistance. Sink the glass
lower, and the water rises in the air-filled region of the glass,
although it does not entirely fill that space. Air is therefore to
some extent compressible. A ball filled with compressed air bounds
much better than when filled with anything else: air is therefore
elastic. When lying at full length in the bath, raise the arm
horizontally out of the water, and you feel it burdened by a great
weight; air is therefore heavy. Put air in equilibrium with other
bodies, and you can measure its weight. From these observations were
constructed the barometer, the siphon, the air-gun, and the air-pump.
All the laws of statics and hydrostatics were discovered by experiments
as simple as these. I would not have my pupil study them in a
laboratory of experimental physics. I dislike all that array of
machines and instruments. The parade of science is fatal to science
itself. All those machines frighten the child; or else their singular
forms divide and distract the attention he ought to give to their
effects.
I would make all our own machines, and not begin by making the
instrument before the experiment has been tried. But after apparently
lighting by chance on the experiment, I should by degrees invent
instruments for verifying it. These instruments should not be so
perfect and exact as our ideas of what they should be and of the
operations resulting from them.
For the first lesson in statics, instead of using balances, I put a
stick across the back of a chair, and when evenly balanced, measure its
two portions. I add weights to each part, sometimes equal, sometimes
unequal. Pushing it to or fro as may be necessary, I finally discover
that equilibrium results from a reciprocal proportion between the
amount of weight and the length of the levers. Thus my little student
of physics can rectify balances without having ever seen them.
When we thus learn by ourselves instead of learning from others, our
ideas are far more definite and clear. Besides, if our reason is not
accustomed to slavish submission to authority, this discovering
relations, linking one idea to another, and inventing apparatus,
renders us much more ingenious. If, instead, we take everything just
as it is given to us, we allow our minds to sink down into
indifference; just as a man who always lets his servants dress him and
wait on him, and his horses carry him about, loses finally not only the
vigor but even the use of his limbs. Boileau boasted that he had
taught Racine to rhyme with difficulty. There are many excellent
labor-saving methods for studying science; but we are in sore need of
one to teach us how to learn them with more effort of our own.
The most manifest value of these slow and laborious researches is, that
amid speculative studies they maintain the activity and suppleness of
the body, by training the hands to labor, and creating habits useful to
any man. So many instruments are invented to aid in our experiments
and to supplement the action of our senses, that we neglect to use the
senses themselves. If the graphometer measures the size of an angle
for us, we need not estimate it ourselves. The eye which measured
distances with precision intrusts this work to the chain; the steelyard
saves me the trouble of measuring weights by the hand. The more
ingenious our apparatus, the more clumsy and awkward do our organs
become. If we surround ourselves with instruments, we shall no longer
find them within ourselves.
But when, in making the apparatus, we employ the skill and sagacity
required in doing without them, we do not lose, but gain. By adding
art to nature, we become more ingenious and no less skilful. If,
instead of keeping a child at his books, I keep him busy in a workshop,
his hands labor to his mind's advantage: while he regards himself only
as a workman he is growing into a philosopher. This kind of exercise
has other uses, of which I will speak hereafter; and we shall see how
philosophic amusements prepare us for the true functions of manhood.
I have already remarked that purely speculative studies are rarely
adapted to children, even when approaching the period of youth; but
without making them enter very deeply into systematic physics, let all
the experiments be connected by some kind of dependence by which the
child can arrange them in his mind and recall them at need. For we
cannot without something of this sort retain isolated facts or even
reasonings long in memory.
In investigating the laws of nature, always begin with the most common
and most easily observed phenomena, and accustom your pupil not to
consider these phenomena as reasons, but as facts. Taking a stone, I
pretend to lay it upon the air; opening my hand, the stone falls.
Looking at Emile, who is watching my motions, I say to him, "Why did
the stone fall?"
No child will hesitate in answering such a question, not even Emile,
unless I have taken great care that he shall not know how. Any child
will say that the stone falls because it is heavy. "And what does
heavy mean?" "Whatever falls is heavy." Here my little philosopher is
really at a stand. Whether this first lesson in experimental physics
aids him in understanding that subject or not, it will always be a
practical lesson.
Nothing to be Taken upon Authority. Learning from the Pupil's own
Necessities.
As the child's understanding matures, other important considerations
demand that we choose his occupations with more care. As soon as he
understands himself and all that relates to him well enough and broadly
enough to discern what is to his advantage and what is becoming in him,
he can appreciate the difference between work and play, and to regard
the one solely as relaxation from the other. Objects really useful may
then be included among his studies, and he will pay more attention to
them than if amusement alone were concerned. The ever-present law of
necessity early teaches us to do what we dislike, to escape evils we
should dislike even more. Such is the use of foresight from which,
judicious or injudicious, springs all the wisdom or all the unhappiness
of mankind.
We all long for happiness, but to acquire it we ought first to know
what it is. To the natural man it is as simple as his mode of life; it
means health, liberty, and the necessaries of life, and freedom from
suffering. The happiness of man as a moral being is another thing,
foreign to the present question. I cannot too often repeat that only
objects purely physical can interest children, especially those who
have not had their vanity aroused and their nature corrupted by the
poison of opinion.
When they provide beforehand for their own wants, their understanding
is somewhat developed, and they are beginning to learn the value of
time. We ought then by all means to accustom and to direct them to its
employment to useful ends, these being such as are useful at their age
and readily understood by them. The subject of moral order and the
usages of society should not yet be presented, because children are not
in a condition to understand such things. To force their attention
upon things which, as we vaguely tell them, will be for their good,
when they do not know what this good means, is foolish. It is no less
foolish to assure them that such things will benefit them when grown;
for they take no interest in this supposed benefit, which they cannot
understand.
Let the child take nothing for granted because some one says it is so.
Nothing is good to him but what he feels to be good. You think it far
sighted to push him beyond his understanding of things, but you are
mistaken. For the sake of arming him with weapons he does not know how
to use, you take from him one universal among men, common sense: you
teach him to allow himself always to be led, never to be more than a
machine in the hands of others. If you will have him docile while he
is young, you will make him a credulous dupe when he is a man. You are
continually saying to him, "All I require of you is for your own good,
but you cannot understand it yet. What does it matter to me whether
you do what I require or not? You are doing it entirely for your own
sake." With such fine speeches you are paving the way for some kind of
trickster or fool,--some visionary babbler or charlatan,--who will
entrap him or persuade him to adopt his own folly.
A man may be well acquainted with things whose utility a child cannot
comprehend; but is it right, or even possible, for a child to learn
what a man ought to know? Try to teach the child all that is useful to
him now, and you will keep him busy all the time. Why would you injure
the studies suitable to him at his age by giving him those of an age he
may never attain? "But," you say, "will there be time for learning
what he ought to know when the time to use it has already come?" I do
not know; but I am sure that he cannot learn it sooner. For experience
and feeling are our real teachers, and we never understand thoroughly
what is best for us except from the circumstances of our case. A child
knows that he will one day be a man. All the ideas of manhood that he
can understand give us opportunities of teaching him; but of those he
cannot understand he should remain in absolute ignorance. This entire
book is only a continued demonstration of this principle of education.
Finding out the East. The Forest of Montmorency.
I do not like explanatory lectures; young people pay very little
attention to them, and seldom remember them. Things! things! I cannot
repeat often enough that we attach too much importance to words. Our
babbling education produces nothing but babblers.
Suppose that while we are studying the course of the sun, and the
manner of finding where the east is, Emile all at once interrupts me,
to ask, "What is the use of all this?" What an opportunity for a fine
discourse! How many things I could tell him of in answering this
question, especially if anybody were by to listen! I could mention the
advantages of travel and of commerce; the peculiar products of each
climate; the manners of different nations; the use of the calendar; the
calculation of seasons in agriculture; the art of navigation, and the
manner of travelling by sea, following the true course without knowing
where we are. I might take up politics, natural history, astronomy,
even ethics and international law, by way of giving my pupil an exalted
idea of all these sciences, and a strong desire to learn them. When I
have done, the boy will not have understood a single idea out of all my
pedantic display. He would like to ask again, "What is the use of
finding out where the east is?" but dares not, lest I might be angry.
He finds it more to his interest to pretend to understand what he has
been compelled to hear. This is not at all an uncommon case in
superior education, so-called.
But our Emile, brought up more like a rustic, and carefully taught to
think very slowly, will not listen to all this. He will run away at
the first word he does not understand, and play about the room, leaving
me to harangue all by myself. Let us find a simpler way; this
scientific display does him no good.
We were noticing the position of the forest north of Montmorency, when
he interrupted me with the eager question, "What is the use of knowing
that?" "You may be right," said I; "we must take time to think about
it; and if there is really no use in it, we will not try it again, for
we have enough to do that is of use." We went at something else, and
there was no more geography that day.
The next morning I proposed a walk before breakfast. Nothing could
have pleased him better; children are always ready to run about, and
this boy had sturdy legs of his own. We went into the forest, and
wandered over the fields; we lost ourselves, having no idea where we
were; and when we intended to go home, could not find our way. Time
passed; the heat of the day came on; we were hungry. In vain did we
hurry about from place to place; we found everywhere nothing but woods,
quarries, plains, and not a landmark that we knew. Heated, worn out
with fatigue, and very hungry, our running about only led us more and
more astray. At last we sat down to rest and to think the matter over.
Emile, like any other child, did not think about it; he cried. He did
not know that we were near the gate of Montmorency, and that only a
narrow strip of woodland hid it from us. But to him this narrow strip
of woodland was a whole forest; one of his stature would be lost to
sight among bushes.
After some moments of silence I said to him, with a troubled air,
"My dear Emile, what shall we do to get away from here?"
EMILE. [_In a profuse perspiration, and crying bitterly._] I don't
know. I'm tired. I'm hungry. I'm thirsty. I can't do anything.
JEAN JACQUES. Do you think I am better off than you, or that I would
mind crying too, if crying would do for my breakfast? There is no use
in crying; the thing is, to find our way. Let me see your watch; what
time is it?
EMILE. It is twelve o'clock, and I haven't had my breakfast.
JEAN JACQUES. That is true. It is twelve o'clock, and I haven't had
my breakfast, either.
EMILE. Oh, how hungry you must be!
JEAN JACQUES. The worst of it is that my dinner will not come here to
find me. Twelve o'clock? it was just this time yesterday that we
noticed where Montmorency is. Could we see where it is just as well
from this forest?
EMILE. Yea; but yesterday we saw the forest, and we cannot see the
town from this place.
JEAN JACQUES. That is a pity. I wonder if we could find out where it
is without seeing it?
EMILE. Oh, my dear friend!
JEAN JACQUES. Did not we say that this forest is--
EMILE. North of Montmorency.
JEAN JACQUES. If that is true, Montmorency must be--
EMILE. South of the forest.
JEAN JACQUES. There is a way of finding out the north at noon.
EMILE. Yes; by the direction of our shadows.
JEAN JACQUES. But the south?
EMILE. How can we find that?
JEAN JACQUES. The south is opposite the north.
EMILE. That is true; all we have to do is to find the side opposite
the shadows. Oh, there's the south! there's the south! Montmorency
must surely be on that side; let us look on that side.
JEAN JACQUES. Perhaps you are right. Let us take this path through
the forest.
EMILE. [_Clapping his hands, with a joyful shout._] Oh, I see
Montmorency; there it is, just before us, in plain sight. Let us go to
our breakfast, our dinner; let us run fast. Astronomy is good for
something!
Observe that even if he does not utter these last words, they will be
in his mind. It matters little so long as it is not I who utter them.
Rest assured that he will never in his life forget this day's lesson.
Now if I had only made him imagine it all indoors, my lecture would
have been entirely forgotten by the next day. We should teach as much
as possible by actions, and say only what we cannot do.
Robinson Crusoe.
In his legitimate preference for teaching by the eye and hand and by
real things, and in his aversion to the barren and erroneous method of
teaching from books alone, Rousseau, constantly carried away by the
passionate ardor of his nature, rushes into an opposite extreme, and
exclaims, "I hate books; they only teach us to talk about what we do
not understand." Then, checked in the full tide of this declamation by
his own good sense, he adds:--
Since we must have books, there is one which, to my mind, furnishes the
finest of treatises on education according to nature. My Emile shall
read this book before any other; it shall for a long time be his entire
library, and shall always hold an honorable place. It shall be the
text on which all our discussions of natural science shall be only
commentaries. It shall be a test for all we meet during our progress
toward a ripened judgment, and so long as our taste is unspoiled, we
shall enjoy reading it. What wonderful book is this? Aristotle?
Pliny? Buffon? No; it is "Robinson Crusoe."
The story of this man, alone on his island, unaided by his fellow-men,
without any art or its implements, and yet providing for his own
preservation and subsistence, even contriving to live in what might be
called comfort, is interesting to persons of all ages. It may be made
delightful to children in a thousand ways. Thus we make the desert
island, which I used at the outset for a comparison, a reality.
This condition is not, I grant, that of man in society; and to all
appearance Emile will never occupy it; but from it he ought to judge of
all others. The surest way to rise above prejudice, and to judge of
things in their true relations, is to put ourselves in the place of an
isolated man, and decide as he must concerning their real utility.
Disencumbered of its less profitable portions, this romance from its
beginning, the shipwreck of Crusoe on the island, to its end, the
arrival of the vessel which takes him away, will yield amusement and
instruction to Emile during the period now in question. I would have
him completely carried away by it, continually thinking of Crusoe's
fort, his goats, and his plantations. I would have him learn, not from
books, but from real things, all he would need to know under the same
circumstances. He should be encouraged to play Robinson Crusoe; to
imagine himself clad in skins, wearing a great cap and sword, and all
the array of that grotesque figure, down to the umbrella, of which he
would have no need. If he happens to be in want of anything, I hope he
will contrive something to supply its place. Let him look carefully
into all that his hero did, and decide whether any of it was
unnecessary, or might have been done in a better way. Let him notice
Crusoe's mistakes and avoid them under like circumstances. He will
very likely plan for himself surroundings like Crusoe's,--a real castle
in the air, natural at his happy age when we think ourselves rich if we
are free and have the necessaries of life. How useful this hobby might
be made if some man of sense would only suggest it and turn it to good
account! The child, eager to build a storehouse for his island, would
be more desirous to learn than his master would be to teach him. He
would be anxious to know everything he could make use of, and nothing
besides. You would not need to guide, but to restrain him.
Here Rousseau insists upon giving a child some trade, no matter what
his station in life may be; and in 1762 he uttered these prophetic
words, remarkable indeed, when we call to mind the disorders at the
close of that century:--
You trust to the present condition of society, without reflecting that
it is subject to unavoidable revolutions, and that you can neither
foresee nor prevent what is to affect the fate of your own children.
The great are brought low, the poor are made rich, the king becomes a
subject. Are the blows of fate so uncommon that you can expect to
escape them? We are approaching a crisis, the age of revolutions. Who
can tell what will become of you then? All that man has done man may
destroy. No characters but those stamped by nature are ineffaceable;
and nature did not make princes, or rich men, or nobles.
This advice was followed. In the highest grades of society it became
the fashion to learn some handicraft. It is well known that Louis XVI.
was proud of his skill as a locksmith. Among the exiles of a later
period, many owed their living to the trade they had thus learned.
To return to Emile: Rousseau selects for him the trade of a joiner, and
goes so far as to employ him and his tutor in that kind of labor for
one or more days of every week under a master who pays them actual
wages for their work.
Judging from Appearances. The Broken Stick.
If I have thus far made myself understood, you may see how, with
regular physical exercise and manual labor, I am at the same time
giving my pupil a taste for reflection and meditation. This will
counterbalance the indolence which might result from his indifference
to other men and from the dormant state of his passions. He must work
like a peasant and think like a philosopher, or he will be as idle as a
savage. The great secret of education is to make physical and mental
exercises serve as relaxation for each other. At first our pupil had
nothing but sensations, and now he has ideas. Then he only perceived,
but now he judges. For from comparison of many successive or
simultaneous sensations, with the judgments based on them, arises a
kind of mixed or complex sensation which I call an idea.
The different manner in which ideas are formed gives each mind its
peculiar character. A mind is solid if it shape its ideas according to
the true relations of things; superficial, if content with their
apparent relations; accurate, if it behold things as they really are;
unsound, if it understand them incorrectly; disordered, if it fabricate
imaginary relations, neither apparent nor real; imbecile, if it do not
compare ideas at all. Greater or less mental power in different men
consists in their greater or less readiness in comparing ideas and
discovering their relations.