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greater; you enervate their constitutions, make them tender and effeminate; in a word, you remove them out of their situation as human beings, into which they must hereafter return in spite of all your solicitude.'*

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His advice on firmness is also good. When the child desires what is necessary, you ought to know and immediately comply with its request: but to be induced to do anything by its tears, is to encourage it to cry; it is to teach it to doubt your good-will, and to think you are influenced more by importunity than benevolence. Beware of this, for

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your child once comes to imagine you are not of a good disposition, he will soon be of a bad one; if he once thinks you compliant, he will soon grow obstinate. You should comply with his request immediately if you do not intend to refuse it. Mortify him not with frequent denials, but never revoke a refusal once made him.'t Caprice, whether of the governor or of the child, is carefully to be shunned.

* Il y a un excès de rigueur et un excès d'indulgence, tous deux également à éviter. Si vous laissez pâtir les enfants, vous exposez leur santé, leur vie; vous les rendez actuellement misérables: si vous leur épargnez avec trop de soin toute espèce de mal-être, vous leur préparez de grandes misères, vous les rendez délicats, sensibles; vous les sortez de leur état d'hommes, dans lequel ils rentreront un jour malgré vous.

Si le besoin l'a fait parler, vous devez le savoir, et faire aussitôt ce qu'il demande; mais céder quelque chose à ses larmes, c'est l'exciter à en verser, c'est lui apprendre à douter de votre bonne volonté, et à croire que l'importunité peut plus sur vous que la bienveillance. S'il ne vous croit pas bon, bientôt il sera méchant; s'il vous croit faible, il sera bientôt opiniâtre: il importe d'accorder toujours au premier signe ce qu'on ne veut pas refuser. Ne soyez point prodigue en refus, mais ne les révoquez jamais.

There is an innate sense of right and wrong implanted in the human heart.' In proof of this, he gives an anecdote of an infant who almost screamed to death on receiving a blow from the nurse. 'I am very certain,' he says, 'had a burning coal fallen by accident on the hand of the child, it would have been less agitated than by this slight blow, given with a manifest intention to hurt it.'*

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For punishments he gives a hint which has been worked out by Mr. H. Spencer. Oppose to his indiscreet desires only physical obstacles, or the inconveniences naturally arising from the actions themselves; these he will remember on a future occasion.' †

Even in the matter of liberty, about which no one disagrees more heartily with Rousseau than I do, we may, I think, learn a lesson from him. Emile acts from his own thoughts, and not from the dictation of others.' 'If your head always directs your pupil's hands, his own head will become useless to him.' There is great truth in this. While differing so far from Rousseau, that I should require the most implicit obedience from boys, I feel that we must give them a certain amount of independent action and freedom from restraint, as a means of education. In

Quand j'aurais douté que le sentiment du juste et de l'injuste fût inné dans le cœur de l'homme, cet exemple seul m'aurait convaincu. Je suis sûr qu'un tison ardent tombé par hasard sur la main de cet enfant lui eût été moins sensible que ce coup assez léger, mais donné dans l'intention manifeste de l'offenser.

N'offrez jamais à ses volontés indiscrètes que des obstacles physiques ou des punitions qui naissent des actions mêmes, et qu'il se rappelle dans l'occasion.

Si votre tête conduit toujours ses bras, la sienne lui devient inutile.

THE CHANGE AT TWELVE YEARS OLD. 129

many of our private schools, a boy is hardly called upon to exercise his will all day long. He rises in the morning when he must; at meals, he eats till he is obliged to stop; he is taken out for exercise like a horse; he has all his indoor work prescribed for him, both as to time and quantity. Vous l'accoutumez à se laisser toujours conduire, à n'être jamais qu'une machine entre les mains d'autrui.' As Montaigne quotes from Seneca, nunquam tutelæ suæ fiunt.' Thus a boy grows up without having any occasion to think or act for himself. He is there fore without self-reliance. So much care is taken to prevent his doing wrong, that he gets to think only of checks from without. He is therefore incapable of self-restraint. Our public schools give more liberty,' and turn out better men.

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We will now suppose the child to have reached the age of twelve, a proficient in ignorance. His education must, at this period, alter entirely. The age for learning has arrived. Give me a child of twelve years of age, who knows nothing at all, and at fifteen I will return him to you as learned as any that you may have instructed earlier; with this difference, that the knowledge of yours will be only in his memory, and that of mine will be in his judgment.'* To what use is it proper a child should put that redundancy of abilities, of which he is at present possessed, and which will fail him at

* Donnez-moi un enfant de douze ans qui ne sache rien du tout, à quinze ans je dois vous le rendre aussi savant que celui que vous avez instruit dès le premier âge; avec la différence que le savoir du vôtre ne sera que dans sa mémoire, et que celui du mien sera dans son jugement.

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another age? He should employ it on those things which may be of utility in time to come. He should throw, if I may so express myself, the superfluity of his present being into the future. The robust child should provide for the subsistence of the feeble man; not in laying up his treasure in coffers whence thieves may steal, nor by entrusting it to the hands of others; but by keeping it in his own. To appropriate his acquisitions to himself he will secure them in the strength and dexterity of his own arms, and in the capacity of his own head. This, therefore, is the time for employment, for instruction, for study. Observe also, that I have not arbitrarily fixed on this period for that purpose: nature itself plainly points it out to us.'*

The education of Émile was to be, to use the language of the present day, scientific, not literary. Rousseau professed a hatred of books, which he said kept the student so long engaged upon the thoughts of other people as to have no time to make a store of his own. "The abuse of reading is destructive to knowledge. Imagining ourselves to know everything we read, we conceive it unnecessary to learn

* Que fera-t-il donc de cet excédant de facultés et de forces qu'il a de trop à présent, et qui lui manquera dans un autre âge? Il tâchera de l'employer à des soins qui lui puissent profiter au besoin; il jettera, pour ainsi dire, dans l'avenir le superflu de son être actuel: l'enfant robuste fera des provisions pour l'homme faible; mais il n'établira ses magasins ni dans des coffres qu'on peut lui voler, ni dans des granges qui lui sont étrangères; .pour s'approprier véritablement son acquis, c'est dans ses bras, dans sa tête, c'est dans lui qu'il le logera. Voici donc le temps des travaux, des instructions, des études: et remarquez que ce n'est pas moi qui fais arbitrairement ce choix, c'est la nature elle-même qui l'indique.

CULTIVATION OF JUDGMENT.

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it by other means. Too much reading, however, serves only to make us presumptuous blockheads. Of all the ages in which literature has flourished, reading was never so universal as in the present, nor were men in general ever so ignorant.' *

Even science was to be studied, not so much with a view to knowledge, as to intellectual vigour. You will remember it is my constant maxim, not to teach the boy a multiplicity of things, but to prevent his acquiring any but clear and precise ideas. His knowing nothing does not much concern me, provided he does not deceive himself,' +

Again he says: Émile has but little knowledge; but what he has is truly his own; he knows nothing by halves. Among the few things he knows, and knows well, the most important is, that there are

* L'abus des livres tue la science. Croyant savoir ce qu'on a lu, on se croit dispensé de l'apprendre. Trop de lecture ne sert qu'à faire de présomptueux ignorants. De tous les siècles de litérature il n'y en a point eu où l'on lût tant que dans celui-ci, et point où l'on fût moins

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+ Souvenez-vous toujours que l'esprit de mon institution n'est pas d'enseigner à l'enfant beaucoup de choses, mais de ne laisser jamais entrer dans son cerveau que des idées justes et claires. Quand il ne saurait rien, peu m'importe, pourvu qu'il ne se trompe pas; et je ne mets des vérités dans sa tête que pour le garantir des erreurs qu'il apprendrait à leur place. La raison, le jugement viennent lentement, les préjugés accourent en foule, c'est d'eux qu'il le faut préserver. Mais si vous regardez la science en elle-même, vous entrez dans une mer sans fond, sans rive, toute pleine d'écueils; vous ne vous en tirerez jamais. Quand je vois un homme épris de l'amour des connaissances se laisser séduire à leur charme et courir de l'une à l'autre sans savoir s'arrêter, je crois voir un enfant sur le rivage amassant des coquilles, et commençant par s'en charger, puis, tenté par celles qu'il voit encore, en rejeter, en reprendre, jusqu'à ce qu'accablé de leur multitude et ne sachant plus que choisir, il finisse par tout jeter, et retourne à vide.

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