will call simple ideas. In a sensation the judgment is wholly passive,
only affirming that we feel what we feel. In a preception or idea, the
judgment is active; it brings together, compares, and determines
relations not determined by the senses. This is the only point of
difference, but it is important. Nature never deceives us; it is
always we who deceive ourselves.
I see a child eight years old helped to some frozen custard. Without
knowing what it is, he puts a spoonful in his mouth, and feeling the
cold sensation, exclaims, "Ah, that burns!" He feels a keen sensation;
he knows of none more so than heat, and thinks that is what he now
feels. He is of course mistaken; the chill is painful, but does not
burn him; and the two sensations are not alike, since, after
encountering both, we never mistake one for the other. It is not,
therefore, the sensation which misleads him, but the judgment based on
it.
It is the same when any one sees for the first time a mirror or optical
apparatus; or enters a deep cellar in mid-winter or midsummer; or
plunges his hand, either very warm or very cold, into tepid water; or
rolls a little ball between two of his fingers held crosswise. If he
is satisfied with describing what he perceives or feels, keeping his
judgment in abeyance, he cannot be mistaken. But when he decides upon
appearances, his judgment is active; it compares, and infers relations
it does not perceive; and it may then be mistaken. He will need
experience to prevent or correct such mistakes. Show your pupil clouds
passing over the moon at night, and he will think that the moon is
moving in an opposite direction, and that the clouds are at rest. He
will the more readily infer that this is the case, because he usually
sees small objects, not large ones, in motion, and because the clouds
seem to him larger than the moon, of whose distance he has no idea.
When from a moving boat he sees the shore at a little distance, he
makes the contrary mistake of thinking that the earth moves. For,
unconscious of his own motion, the boat, the water, and the entire
horizon seem to him one immovable whole of which the moving shore is
only one part.
The first time a child sees a stick half immersed in water, it seems to
be broken. The sensation is a true one, and would be, even if we did
not know the reason for this appearance. If therefore you ask him what
he sees, he answers truly, "A broken stick," because he is fully
conscious of the sensation of a broken stick. But when, deceived by
his judgment, he goes farther, and after saying that he sees a broken
stick, he says again that the stick really is broken, he says what is
not true; and why? Because his judgment becomes active; he decides no
longer from observation, but from inference, when he declares as a fact
what he does not actually perceive; namely, that touch would confirm
the judgment based upon sight alone.
The best way of learning to judge correctly is the one which tends to
simplify our experience, and enables us to make no mistakes even when
we dispense with experience altogether. It follows from this that
after having long verified the testimony of one sense by that of
another, we must further learn to verify the testimony of each sense by
itself without appeal to any other. Then each sensation at once
becomes an idea, and an idea in accordance with the truth. With such
acquisitions I have endeavored to store this third period of human life.
To follow this plan requires a patience and a circumspection of which
few teachers are capable, and without which a pupil will never learn to
judge correctly. For example: if, when he is misled by the appearance
of a broken stick, you endeavor to show him his mistake by taking the
stick quickly out of the water, you may perhaps undeceive him, but what
will you teach him? Nothing he might not have learned for himself.
You ought not thus to teach him one detached truth, instead of showing
him how he may always discover for himself any truth. If you really
mean to teach him, do not at once undeceive him. Let Emile and myself
serve you for example.
In the first place, any child educated in the ordinary way would, to
the second of the two questions above mentioned, answer, "Of course the
stick is broken." I doubt whether Emile would give this answer.
Seeing no need of being learned or of appearing learned, he never
judges hastily, but only from evidence. Knowing how easily appearances
deceive us, as in the case of perspective, he is far from finding the
evidence in the present case sufficient. Besides, knowing from
experience that my most trivial question always has an object which he
does not at once discover, he is not in the habit of giving heedless
answers. On the contrary, he is on his guard and attentive; he looks
into the matter very carefully before replying. He never gives me an
answer with which he is not himself satisfied, and he is not easily
satisfied. Moreover, he and I do not pride ourselves on knowing facts
exactly, but only on making few mistakes. We should be much more
disconcerted if we found ourselves satisfied with an insufficient
reason than if we had discovered none at all. The confession, "I do
not know," suits us both so well, and we repeat it so often, that it
costs neither of us anything. But whether for this once he is
careless, or avoids the difficulty by a convenient "I do not know," my
answer is the same: "Let us see; let us find out."
The stick, half-way in the water, is fixed in a vertical position. To
find out whether it is broken, as it appears to be, how much we must do
before we take it out of the water, or even touch it! First, we go
entirely round it, and observe that the fracture goes around with us.
It is our eye alone, then, that changes it; and a glance cannot move
things from place to place.
Secondly, we look directly down the stick, from the end outside of the
water; then the stick is no longer bent, because the end next our eye
exactly hides the other end from us. Has our eye straightened the
stick?
Thirdly, we stir the surface of the water, and see the stick bend
itself into several curves, move in a zig-zag direction, and follow the
undulations of the water. Has the motion we gave the water been enough
thus to break, to soften, and to melt the stick?
Fourth, we draw off the water and see the stick straighten itself as
fast as the water is lowered. Is not this more than enough to
illustrate the fact and to find out the refraction? It is not then
true that the eye deceives us, since by its aid alone we can correct
the mistakes we ascribe to it.
Suppose the child so dull as not to understand the result of these
experiments. Then we must call touch to the aid of sight. Instead of
taking the stick out of the water, leave it there, and let him pass his
hand from one end of it to the other. He will feel no angle; the
stick, therefore, is not broken.
You will tell me that these are not only judgments but formal
reasonings. True; but do you not see that, as soon as the mind has
attained to ideas, all judgment is reasoning? The consciousness of any
sensation is a proposition, a judgment. As soon, therefore, as we
compare one sensation with another, we reason. The art of judging and
the art of reasoning are precisely the same.
If, from the lesson of this stick, Emile does not understand the idea
of refraction, he will never understand it at all. He shall never
dissect insects, or count the spots on the sun; he shall not even know
what a microscope or a telescope is.
Your learned pupils will laugh at his ignorance, and will not be very
far wrong. For before he uses these instruments, I intend he shall
invent them; and you may well suppose that this will not be soon done.
This shall be the spirit of all my methods of teaching during this
period. If the child rolls a bullet between two crossed fingers, I
will not let him look at it till he is otherwise convinced that there
is only one bullet there.
Result. The Pupil at the Age of Fifteen.
I think these explanations will suffice to mark distinctly the advance
my pupil's mind has hitherto made, and the route by which he has
advanced. You are probably alarmed at the number of subjects I have
brought to his notice. You are afraid I will overwhelm his mind with
all this knowledge. But I teach him rather not to know them than to
know them. I am showing him a path to knowledge not indeed difficult,
but without limit, slowly measured, long, or rather endless, and
tedious to follow. I am showing him how to take the first steps, so
that he may know its beginning, but allow him to go no farther.
Obliged to learn by his own effort, he employs his own reason, not that
of another. Most of our mistakes arise less within ourselves than from
others; so that if he is not to be ruled by opinion, he must receive
nothing upon authority. Such continual exercise must invigorate the
mind as labor and fatigue strengthen the body.
The mind as well as the body can bear only what its strength will
allow. When the understanding fully masters a thing before intrusting
it to the memory, what it afterward draws therefrom is in reality its
own. But if instead we load the memory with matters the understanding
has not mastered, we run the risk of never finding there anything that
belongs to it.
Emile has little knowledge, but it is really his own; he knows nothing
by halves; and the most important fact is that he does not now know
things he will one day know; that many things known to other people he
never will know; and that there is an infinity of things which neither
he nor any one else ever will know. He is prepared for knowledge of
every kind; not because he has so much, but because he knows how to
acquire it; his mind is open to it, and, as Montaigne says, if not
taught, he is at least teachable. I shall be satisfied if he knows how
to find out the "wherefore" of everything he knows and the "why" of
everything he believes. I repeat that my object is not to give him
knowledge, but to teach him how to acquire it at need; to estimate it
at its true value, and above all things, to love the truth. By this
method we advance slowly, but take no useless steps, and are not
obliged to retrace a single one.
Emile understands only the natural and purely physical sciences. He
does not even know the name of history, or the meaning of metaphysics
and ethics. He knows the essential relations between men and things,
but nothing of the moral relations between man and man. He does not
readily generalize or conceive of abstractions. He observes the
qualities common to certain bodies without reasoning about the
qualities themselves. With the aid of geometric figures and algebraic
signs, he knows something of extension and quantity. Upon these
figures and signs his senses rest their knowledge of the abstractions
just named. He makes no attempt to learn the nature of things, but
only such of their relations as concern himself. He estimates external
things only by their relation to him; but this estimate is exact and
positive, and in it fancies and conventionalities have no share. He
values most those things that are most useful to him; and never
deviating from this standard, is not influenced by general opinion.
Emile is industrious, temperate, patient, steadfast, and full of
courage. His imagination, never aroused, does not exaggerate dangers.
He feels few discomforts, and can bear pain with fortitude, because he
has never learned to contend with fate. He does not yet know exactly
what death is, but, accustomed to yield to the law of necessity, he
will die when he must, without a groan or a struggle. Nature can do no
more at that moment abhorred by all. To live free and to have little
to do with human affairs is the best way of learning how to die.
In a word, Emile has every virtue which affects himself. To have the
social virtues as well, he only needs to know the relations which make
them necessary; and this knowledge his mind is ready to receive. He
considers himself independently of others, and is satisfied when others
do not think of him at all. He exacts nothing from others, and never
thinks of owing anything to them. He is alone in human society, and
depends solely upon himself. He has the best right of all to be
independent, for he is all that any one can be at his age. He has no
errors but such as a human being must have; no vices but those from
which no one can warrant himself exempt. He has a sound constitution,
active limbs, a fair and unprejudiced mind, a heart free and without
passions. Self-love, the first and most natural of all, has scarcely
manifested itself at all. Without disturbing any one's peace of mind
he has led a happy, contented life, as free as nature will allow. Do
you think a youth who has thus attained his fifteenth year has lost the
years that have gone before?
[1] This might be carried too far, and is to be admitted with some
reservations. Ignorance is never alone; its companions are always
error and presumption. No one is so certain that he knows, as he who
knows nothing; and prejudice of all kinds is the form in which our
ignorance is clothed.
[2] The armillary sphere is a group of pasteboard or copper circles, to
illustrate the orbits of the planets, and their position in relation to
the earth, which is represented by a small wooden ball.
[3] The imaginary circles traced on the celestial sphere, and figured
in the armillary sphere by metallic circles, are called _culures_.
[4] Rousseau here informs his readers that even these reproaches are
expected, he having dictated them beforehand to the mountebank; all
this scene has been arranged to deceive the child. What a refinement
of artifice in this passionate lover of the natural!