The French Revolution
Emile, on Education, by J.J. Rousseau
[1:] I began this disorderly and almost endless collection of scattered thoughts and observations in order to gratify a good mother who knows how to think. At first I had planned a memoir of only a few pages, but my subject carried me along in spite of myself, and imperceptibly the memoir became a kind of treatise, too large indeed for what it contained but too small for the matter with which it deals. For a long time I hesitated whether to publish it or not, and I have often felt while working upon it that writing a few brochures does not teach one how to compose a book. After vain attempts to improve it, I believe I must give it over as it is, since it is important to direct public attention to this subject. And whenever my ideas are bad, if I make others come up with good ones I will not have completely wasted my time. A man who from a solitary retreat casts his writings before the public without any one to advertise them, without any party to defend them, without even knowing what is thought and said about them, need not fear that if he is wrong people will accept his errors without examining them.
[2:] I shall say very little about the value of a good education, nor will I stop to prove that the customary method of education is bad. Thousands of others have done this before and I do not wish to fill my book with things that everyone knows. I will merely state that since the beginning of time there has been a continual outcry against the established practice without anyone suggesting how to propose a better one. The literature and science of our century tend to destroy rather than to build up. When we censor others we take on the tone of a pedagogue. But to propose something new we must adopt a different tone, one less gratifying to the philosopher's pride. In spite of all those books whose only aim, so they say, is public utility, the most useful of all arts -- the art of training men -- is still neglected. Even after Locke's book my subject was completely new , and I strongly fear that it will still be so after mine.
[3:] We know nothing of childhood, and with our mistaken notions the further we advance the further we go astray. The wisest writers devote themselves to what a man ought to know without asking what a child is capable of learning. They are always looking for the man in the child without considering what he is before he becomes a man. It is the latter study to which I have applied myself the most; so that if my method is unrealistic and unsound at least one can profit from my observations. I may be greatly mistaken as to what ought to be done, but I think I have clearly perceived the material that is to be worked upon. Begin thus by making a more careful study of your pupils, for it is clear that you know nothing about them. If you read this book with that end in view I think you will find that it is not entirely useless.
[4:] With regard to what will be called the systematic portion of the book, which is nothing more than the course of nature, it is probably this part that will derail the reader the most. It is also without a doubt the part for which I will be criticized, and perhaps my critics will not be wrong. They will say that this is not so much a treatise on education as the dreams of a visionary about education. What can I do? I have not written down other people's ideas of education but my own. I do not see things like other men; for a long time people have reproached me for this. But is it within my power to give myself other eyes, or to adopt other ideas? No. It is within my power to avoid loosing myself in my own views and to not think myself wiser than everyone else. I am not responsible for changing other people's sentiments but for distrusting my own. This is all I can do, and this I have done. If I occasionally adopt an assertive tone, it is not to impose it on the reader but to speak to him or her the way I think. Why should I suggest as doubtful that which is not a matter of doubt to myself? I say exactly what comes into my mind.
[5:] By freely expressing my own sentiment I have so little idea of claiming authority that I always give my reasons. This way people may weigh and judge them for themselves. But while I do not wish to be stubborn in defending my ideas, I think it my duty to put them forward. For the principles with regard to which I differ from other writers are not matters of indifference. We must know whether they are true or false, for on them depends the happiness or the misery of the human race.
[6:] Propose what is feasible, they repeatedly tell me. It is as if I were being told to propose what people are doing already, or at least to propose some good which mixes well with the existing wrongs. Such a project is in certain ways much more unrealistic than my own, for in that mix the good is spoiled and the bad is not improved. I would rather follow exactly the established method than adopt a better method halfway. There would be fewer contradictions in man, for man cannot aim at the same time at two opposite goals. Fathers and mothers, what is feasible is what you are willing to do. Must I answer for your will? [7:] In any kind of project, there are two things to consider: first, the absolute goodness of the project; second, the facility of its execution.
[8:] With regard to the first of these, in order that the project be acceptable and practical in itself, it suffices that what is good about it be in the nature of the thing -- here, for example, that the proposed education be suitable to man and well adapted to the human heart.
[9:] The second consideration depends upon the given relationships of certain situations. These relationships are accidental and therefore not necessary and can vary infinitely. Thus one kind of education would be practicable in Switzerland and not in France; another would be right for the middle classes but not for the nobility. The project can be carried out with more or less success according to a multitude of circumstances, and its results can only be determined by its special application to one country or another, to this class or that. Yet all these particular applications are not essential to my subject, and they form no part of my scheme. Others can concern themselves with them if they want, each for the country or the state they have in view. It is enough for me that wherever men are born one can do with them what I propose, and having done with them what I propose, one would have done what is best for them and for others. If I do not fulfill this pledge I am wrong, no doubt; but if I do fulfil it, it is also wrong to ask more of me. For that is all I have promised.
[203:] This is the second stage of life and the one in which infancy, strictly speaking, is over. For the words infans and puer are not synonymous. The latter includes the former, which means literally "one who cannot speak;" thus Valerius speaks of puerum infantem. But I shall continue to use the word child
[French enfant] according to the custom of our language until an age for which there is another term.
[204:] When children begin to talk they cry less. This progress is quite natural; one language is substituted for the other. As soon as they can say with words that something hurts, why should they cry, unless the pain is too sharp for words? If they still cry, those about them are to blame. When once Emile has said, "It hurts," it will take a very sharp pain to make him cry.
[205:] If the child is delicate and sensitive, if by nature he begins to cry for nothing, by making his cries useless and without effect I soon check his tears at their source. So long as he cries I will not go near him; I come at once when he is quiet. Soon his way of calling me will be to be silent, or at least to let out a single cry. It is by the sensible effect of signs that children learn of their meaning; there is no other convention for them. However much a child hurts himself, when he is alone he rarely cries unless he hopes to be heard.
[206:] If he should fall or bump his head or make his nose bleed or cut his fingers, instead of rushing to him with an with an expression of alarm I will stay calm, at least at first. The harm is done; it is necessary that he endure it. All my fussing could only frighten him more and add to his sensibility. Basically it is not the blow but the fear of it which torments us when we are hurt. I will spare him this anquish at least, for he will certainly judge the injury as he sees me judge it. If he sees me running to him with worry to console him, to pity him, he will think himself dead. If he sees me keeping my cool he will soon recover his own and will think the wound is healed when it ceases to hurt. This is the time for his first lesson in courage, and by bearing slight ills without fear we gradually learn to bear greater ones.
[207:] Far from trying to prevent Emile from hurting himself, I would be worried if he never hurt himself, if he grew up not knowing pain. To suffer is the first thing that he must learn and the one that he will have the greatest need to know. It seems that children are small and weak only in order to learn these important lessons without any danger. The child has such a little way to fall he will not break his leg; if he knocks himself with a stick he will not break his arm; if he grabs a sharp knife he will not grasp it tight enough to make a deep wound. So far as I know, no child left to himself has ever been known to kill or maim himself or even to do himself any serious harm, unless he has been foolishly left on a high place or alone near the fire or within reach of dangerous weapons. What is there to be said for all the paraphernalia which surrounds the child to protect him on every side against pain until, having grown up, he remains at its mercy without courage and without experience, and believes himself dead at the first pinprick and faints at the sight of blood?
[208:] Our didactic and pedantic mania is always to teach children what they could learn better by themselves and to neglect what we alone can teach them. Can anything be stupider than the trouble taken to teach them to walk, as if any child has been seen who, from the negligence of its caretaker, has not learned how to walk by the time it grew up? Yet how many, on the contrary, we see walking badly all their life because they were ill taught!
[209:] Emile will have no padded bonnets, no go-carts, no leading-strings; or at least as soon as he can put one foot before another he will be supported only along pavements, and those will be crossed very quickly.
[note 18] Instead of keeping him cooped up in a stuffy room, take him out into a meadow every day. There let him run, let him frisk about. If he falls a hundred times, so much the better. He will learn all the sooner how to pick himself up. The well-being of liberty will make up for many wounds. My pupil will often have bruises; in return he will always be gay. Your pupils may have fewer bruises, but they are always constrained, always enchained, always sad. I doubt whether they are any better off.
[210:] Another progress which makes tears less necessary to children is the development of their strengths. Able to do more for themselves, they need the help of others less frequently. Along with their strength develops the understanding that puts them in a condition to direct it. It is with this second stage that the life of the individual properly begins; it is now that the child becomes conscious of himself. Memory extends the sentiment of identity to every moment of his existence. He becomes truly one and the same person, and consequently already capable of happiness or of misery. It is important therefore to begin to consider him here as a moral being.
[211:] Although we know approximately the limits of human life and our chances of attaining those limits, nothing is more uncertain than the length of the life of any one of us. Very few reach old age. The chief risks occur at the beginning of life; the shorter our past life, the less we must hope to live. Of all the children who are born scarcely one half reach adolescence, and it is very likely your pupil will not reach the age of manhood.
[212:] What is to be thought, therefore, of that cruel education which sacrifices the present to an uncertain future, that burdens a child with all sorts of restrictions, and begins by making him miserable in order to prepare him for some far-off happiness he may never enjoy? Even if I considered such an education wise in its aims, how could I view without indignation those poor creatures subjected to an intolerable yoke and condemned like galley-slaves to endless tasks with no certainty of any rewards? The age of gaity is spent in tears, punishments, threats, and slavery. You torment the poor thing for his own good; you fail to see that you are calling Death to snatch him from these gloomy machinations. Who can say how many children fall victims to the excessive wisdom of their fathers or tutors? Lucky to escape from his cruelty, the only advantage they gain from the ills they are made to suffer is to die without regretting a life known only for its torments.
[213:] Men, be humane; that is your first duty. Be humane toward every condition, every age, toward all that is not foreign to humanity. What wisdom is there for you outside of humanity? Love childhood, promote its pleasures, its lovable instincts. Who among you has not sometimes missed that age when laughter was always on our lips, and when the soul was always at peace? Why take away from these innocent little people the joys of a time that will escape them so quickly and gifts that could never cause any harm? Why fill with bitterness the fleeting days of early childhood, days which will no more return for them than for you? Fathers, can you tell the moment when death awaits your children? Do not prepare yourself for regrets by robbing them of the few moments which nature has given them. As soon as they are aware of the pleasure of existence, let them rejoice in it; make it so that whenever God calls them they will not die without having tasted life.
[214:] How people will cry out against me! I hear from afar the shouts of that false wisdom which projects us incessantly outside of ourselves, which counts the present as nothing, and which, pursuing without relief a future which flees as we advance, by transporting us away from where we are takes us to a place we will never be.
[215:] Now is the time, you say, to correct the evil inclinations of man. We must increase suffering in childhood, when it is less keenly felt, in order to lessen it in the age of reason. But how do you know that you can carry out all these fine schemes; how do you know that all this fine teaching with which you overwhelm the feeble mind of the child will not do him more harm than good in the future? How do you know that you can spare him anything by the sorrows that you lavish on him? Why inflict on him more ills than suit his present condition unless you are quite sure that these present ills will save him future ill? And what proof can you give me that those evil tendencies you profess to cure are not the result of your foolish precautions rather than of nature? What a poor sort of foresight, to make a child miserable in the present with the more or less doubtful hope of making him happy at some future day! If such vulger reasoners confuse licence and liberty, a happy child and a spoiled child, let us help them learn to distinguish between the two.
[216:] To avoid pursuing fantasies, let us not forget what suits our condition. Humanity has its place in the order of things; childhood has its place in the order of human life. The man must be treated as a man and the child as a child. Assign each one to his place, and fix him there. Order human passions according to the constitution of man; that is all we can do for his well-being. The rest depends on external causes which are not in our power.
[217:] We do not know what absolute happiness or unhappiness is. Everything is mixed together in this life. We never taste any pure sentiment, nor do we remain for more than two moments in the same state. The feelings of our minds, like the changes in our bodies, are in a continual flux. The good and the bad are common to all, but in different measurements. The happiest is he who suffers least from his pains; the most miserable is he who feels the least pleasure. Always more suffering than joy-- this is the difference common to all. Man's happiness in this world is thus only a negative state; it must be reckoned by the least quantity of ills that he suffers.
[218:] Every sentiment of pain is inseparable from the desire to get rid of it; every idea of pleasure is inseparable from the desire to enjoy it. All desire implies a deprivation, and all deprivations that one feels are painful. Our unhappiness thus consists in the disproportion between our desires and our faculties. A conscious being whose faculties were equal to his desires would be an absolutely happy being.
[219:] In what, therefore, consists human wisdom and the route to true happiness? It is not exactly in diminishing our desires; for if they were less than our powers, part of our faculties would remain idle, and we should not enjoy the whole of our being. Neither is it in extending our faculties, for if our desires were extended at the same time by a greater extent we would only become more unhappy. Rather, true happiness consists in decreasing the excess of desires over faculties and putting power and will into a perfect equilibrium. With all forces in action it is only then that the soul will nevertheless remain peaceful and that man will find himself well ordered.
[220:] It is thus that nature, which does everything for the best, originally constituted man. Nature first gave him only such desires that are necessary for self-preservation and such faculties as are sufficient for their satisfaction. All the others were put in reserve at the bottom of his soul for him to develop when needed. It is only in this primitive condition that we encounter the equilibrium between desire and power and where man is not unhappy. As soon as his potential faculties are put into action, imagination, the most active of all, awakes and precedes all the rest. It is imagination which extends for us the measure of what is possible either for good or for evil, and consequently which excites and nourishes our desires with the hope of satisfying them. But the object which seems at first within our grasp flies away quicker than we can follow; when we think we have grasped it, it transforms itself and is again far ahead of us. No longer perceiving the terrain we have already traversed, we count it as nothing; that which lies before us becomes vaster and stretches still before us. Thus we exhaust our strength without reaching our goal, and the closer we get to pleasure the further we are from happiness.
[221:] In contrast, the closer man stays to his natural condition, the smaller is the difference between his faculties and desires and the less far he consequently is from being happy. He is never less miserable than when he seems to be deprived of everything; for unhappiness consists not in the privation of things but in the need which is felt for them.
[222:] The real world has its limits, the imaginary world is infinite. Being unable to enlarge the one let us diminish the other, for it is from their difference alone that arise all the pains that make us truly unhappy. Except for health, strength, and self-estime, all the goods of this life are a matter of opinion; except for bodily suffering and remorse of conscience, all our ills are imaginary. You will tell me this is common knowledge. I admit it, but its practical application is not common knowledge, and it is with practice only that we are concerned here.
[223:] When we say that man is weak, what do we mean? This word weak implies a relation, a relation of the being to which it is applied. The one whose strength surpasses his needs, be it an insect or a worm, is a strong being. The one whose needs surpass its strength, be it an elephant, a lion, a conqueror, a hero, a God, is a weak being. The rebellious angel who fought against his own nature was weaker than the happy mortal who is living at peace according to nature. Man is very strong when he is content to be what he is; he is very weak when he wants to elevate himself above humanity. Do not imagine, therefore, that you can increase your strength by increasing your faculties. On the contrary, you diminish your strength if your pride increases even more. Let us measure the radius of our sphere and remain in its center, like the insect in the middle of its web. We will be sufficient to ourselves and will have no reason to complain of our weakness, for we will never feel it.
[224:] All animals possess exactly the faculties necessary for self-preservation. Man alone has superfluous ones. Is it not very strange that this superfluity should be the instrument of his unhappiness? In every land a man's labour yields more than his subsistence. If he were wise enough to disregard this surplus he would always have enough, for he would never have too much. "Great needs," said Favorinus, "spring from great wealth; and often the best way of getting what we want is to get rid of what we have." By striving to increase our happiness we change it into unhappiness. Every man who only wished to live would live happily; consequently he would be good, for what would be the advantage for him to be bad?
[225:] If we were immortal we should all be miserable. No doubt it is hard to die, but it is sweet to think that we shall not live for ever and that a better life will put an end to the sorrows of this world. If we had the offer of immortality on earth, who would accept the sorrowful gift?
[note 19] What resources, what hopes, what consolation would be left against the cruelties of fate and man's injustice? The ignorant man who never looks ahead knows little of the value of life and does not fear to lose it. The enlightened man sees things of greater worth and prefers them to life. Half-knowledge and sham wisdom set us thinking about death and what lies beyond it; and they thus create the worst of our ills. The wise man bears life's ills all the better because he knows he must die. Life would be too dearly bought if we did not know that sooner or later death will end it.
[226:] Our moral ills are all based on opinion -- except for crime, and that depends on ourselves. Our bodily ills either destroy themselves or destroy us. Time or death will cure them. But we suffer much more from not knowing how to suffer; and we give ourselves more torment in curing our illnesses than we would have if we endured them. Live according to nature; be patient, get rid of the doctors. You will not escape death, but you will only die once, while the doctors make you die daily through your diseased imagination. Their lying art, instead of prolonging your days, robs you of all delight in them. I am always asking what real good this art has done to mankind. True, the doctors cure some who would have died, but they kill millions who would have lived. If you are wise you will decline to take part in this lottery when the odds are so great against you. Suffer, die, or get better; but whatever you do, live while you are alive.
[227:] Human institutions are one mass of folly and contradiction. As our life loses its value we set a higher price upon it. Old people regret life more than the young; they do not want to lose all they have spent in preparing for its enjoyment. At sixty it is cruel to die when one has not begun to live. Man is credited with a strong desire for self-preservation, and this desire exists; but we fail to perceive that this desire, as felt by us, is largely the work of man. In a natural state man is only eager to preserve his life while he has the means for its preservation; when self-preservation is no longer possible, he resigns himself to his fate and dies without vain torments. Nature teaches us the first law of resignation. Savages, like wild beasts, make very little struggle against death, and meet it almost without complaint. When this natural law is overthrown another is formed which comes from reason, but few know how to draw upon it, and this artificial resignation is never so clear and complete as the first one.
[228:] Foresight! Foresight -- which carries us ceaselessly beyond ourselves and often to a place we shall never reach -- here is the real source of all our unhappiness. How insane it is for so short-lived a creature as man to look forward into a future to which so rarely arrives, while he neglects the present which is sure. This madness is all the more fatal when it increases with years, and when old people -- always timid, prudent, and miserly -- prefer to refuse themselves necessities today than to lack them in a hundred years. Thus we grasp everything, we cling to everything. We are anxious about time, place, people, things, all that is and will be. Our individual self is only the least part of ourselves. Each one spreads himself, so to speak, over the whole world, and becomes sensitive to all this vast surface. Is it surprising that our ills multiply at each point where we can be hurt? How many princes make themselves miserable for the loss of a land they have never seen! How many merchants weep in Paris over some misfortune in the Indies!
[229:] Is it nature that thus carries men so far from their real selves? Is it nature's will that each should learn his fate from others and sometimes even be the last to learn it, so that a man dies happy or miserable before he knows what he is about? I see a healthy, cheerful, strong and vigorous man; his presence inspires joy; his eyes tell of contentedness and well-being; he carries with him the image of happiness. A letter comes in the mail. The happy man glances at it, it is addressed to him. He opens it and reads it. Immediately his expression changes, he turns pale and collapses in dispair. When he comes to himself he weeps, trembles, and moans; he tears his hair and his cries fill the room. You would say he was in convulsions. Fool, what harm has this bit of paper done you? What limb has it torn away? What crime has it made you commit? What has it changed in you to put you in the state that I now see you in?
[230:] Had the letter been lost, had some kindly hand thrown it into the fire, it seems to me that the fate of this mortal, at once happy and unhappy, would have offered us a strange problem. His misfortunes, you say, were real enough. Granted; but he did not feel them. What of that? His happiness was imaginary. I admit it; health, wealth, a contented spirit, are mere dreams. We no longer exist where we are, we only exist where we are not. Is it worth it to have such a great fear of death provided that what we live off of remains?
[231:] Oh, man! Confine your existence inside of yourself and you will no longer be unhappy. Stay in the place that nature has assigned you in the chain of being; nothing should be able to make you leave it. Do not kick against the stern law of necessity, nor waste in vain resistance the strength that heaven gave you not to prolong or extend your existence but to preserve it so far and so long as heaven pleases. Your freedom and your power extend as far and no further than your natural strength; anything more is only slavery, illusion, reputation. Domination itself is servile when it depends upon opinion; for you are dependent on the prejudices of others when you rule them by means of those prejudices. To lead them as you please you must conduct yourself as they please. They have only to change their way of thinking and you are forced to change your course of action. Those who approach you need only contrive to sway the opinions of those you rule, or of the favourite by whom you are ruled, or those of your own family or theirs. Even if you had the genius of Themistocles,
[note 20] all these viziers, courtiers, priests, soldiers, servants, babblers, the very children themselves, would lead you like a child in the midst of your legions. Whatever you do, your actual authority can never extend beyond your own faculties. As soon as you are obliged to see with others' eyes, their wills must be your own. You may say with pride, "My people are my subjects." Granted, but what are you? The subject of your ministers. And your ministers, what are they? The subjects of their clerks, their mistresses, the servants of their servants. Grasp all, usurp all, and then pour out your silver with both hands; lay out your plans for war, raise the gallows and the wheel; make laws, issue proclamations, multiply your spies, your soldiers, your hangmen, your prisons, and your chains. Poor little men, what good does all of this do you? You will be no better served, you will not be less robbed or deceived, nor more absolute in your power. You will say continually, "We want," and you will continually do what others want.
[232:] The only man who follows his own will is he who has no need to put another man's arms at the end of his own. From this it follows that the the greatest good is not authority but freedom. The truly free man wants only what he can do and does what he pleases. This is my fundamental maxim. Apply it to childhood, and all the rules of education spring from it.
[233:] Society has weakened man not only by depriving him of the right to his own strength, but above all by making his strength insufficient for his needs. This is why his desires are multiplied with his weakness; and this is why the child is weaker than the man. If a man is strong and a child is weak it is not because the strength of the one is absolutely greater than the strength of the other, but because the one can naturally provide for himself and the other cannot. Thus the man will have more wishes and the child more whims, a word which I take to mean desires which are not true needs, desires which can only be satisfied with the help of others.
[234:] I have already given the reason for this state of weakness. Parental affection is nature's provision against it; but parental affection may have its excesses, its failings, its abuses. Parents who live in the civil state bring their child into it before the right age. By giving him more needs than he naturally has they do not relieve his weakness; they increase it. They further increase it by demanding of him what nature does not demand, by subjecting to their wills what little strength he has to serve his own, by making slaves of themselves or of him instead of recognising the mutual dependence which should result from his weakness and their affection.
[235:] The wise man knows how to stay in his place, but the child who does not know what his place is unable to keep it. There are a thousand ways out of it. It is the business of those who have charge of the child to keep him in his place, and this is no easy task. He should be neither beast nor man, but child. He must feel his weakness but not suffer from it. He must be dependent but he must not obey. He must ask, not command. He is only subject to others because of his needs and because they see better than he what is useful to him, what may help or hinder his existence. No one, not even his father, has the right to command the child do what is of no use to him.
[236:] Before our prejudices and human institutions have altered our natural inclinations, the happiness of children as well as of men consists in the use of their freedom. But children's freedom is limited by their weakness. He who does as he likes is happy provided he is self-sufficient; it is so with the man living in a state of nature. He who does what he likes is not happy if his desires exceed his strength; it is so with a child in similar conditions. Even in a state of nature children only enjoy an imperfect freedom, like that enjoyed by men in social life. Each of us, unable to dispense with the help of others, becomes in this way weak and unhappy. We were made to be men; laws and society plunge us back into infancy. The rich and great, even kings, are children who, when they see us hurry to sooth their miseries, draw from that a childish vanity and are full of pride for the attentions that they would never have gotten if they were grown men.
[237:] These considerations are important and serve to resolve all the contradictions of the social system. There are two kinds of dependence: dependence on things, which is from nature; and dependence on men, which is from society. Dependence on things, since it has no morality, does no harm to freedom and engenders no vices. Dependence on men, being without order,
[note 21] engenders all the vices, and through this master and slave become mutually corrupted. If there is any means of remedying this evil in society it is by substituting law for man, and by arming the general wills with a real force that is superior to the action of every individual will. If the laws of nations could have the inflexibility of the laws of nature that no human force could overcome, then the dependence of men would become once again a dependence on things. Thus one would reunite in the republic all the advantages of the natural state with those of the civil state; one could bring together the freedom that keeps man exempt from vice with the morality that raises him to virtue.
[238:] Keep the child dependent only on things. You will have followed the order of nature in the progress of his education. Never offer to his indiscrete will anything but physical obstacles or punishments that arise from the actions themselves and which he will recall at the proper occasion. Without forbidding him from doing wrong it suffices to prevent him from doing it. Experience or lack of strength alone ought take the place of law for him. Grant nothing to his desires because he demands it but only because he needs it. Let him not know what obedience is when he acts nor what domination is when someone acts for him. Let him feel his freedom equally in his actions and in yours. Supply the strength he lacks as precisely as he needs it in order to be free but not imperious; so that while receiving your services with a sort of humiliation he may look forward to the time when he will do without them and have the honor of serving himself.
[239:] To strengthen the body and make it grow, nature has means that should never be opposed. One must not force a child to stay when he wants to go, nor to go when he wants to stay. When we have not spoiled the wills of children by our own fault they want nothing arbitrarily. They must jump, run, shout when they wish. All their movements are from the needs of their constitution which seeks to strengthen itself. But one should be mistrustful of their wanting to do things that they cannot do themselves and that others are obliged to do for them. Then one must distinguish carefully between the true need, the natural need, and the needs of budding whim or those which come only from the overflowing life just described.
[240:] I have already told you what you ought to do when a child cries for this thing or that. I will only add that as soon as he has words to ask for what he wants and accompanies his demands with tears, either to get his own way quicker or to over-ride a refusal, he should never have his way. If his words were prompted by a real need you should recognise it and satisfy it at once. But to yield to his tears is to encourage him to cry, to teach him to doubt your kindness, and to think that you are influenced more by his impertinance than your own goodwill. If he does not think you good, soon he will be evil; if he thinks you weak he will soon become obstinate. It is important to grant at his first sign anything that you do not wish to refuse him. Do not overdo your refusals, but, having refused, do not change your mind.
[241:] Above all, beware of teaching the child empty phrases of politeness that only serve as magic words to subdue those around him to his will and to get him what he wants at once. The artificial education of the rich never fails to make them politely imperious by teaching them the words to use so that no one will dare to resist them. Their children have neither the tone nor the manner of suppliants; they are as haughty or even more haughty in their entreaties than in their commands, as though they were more certain to be obeyed. It is obvious that "If you please" means "It pleases me," and "I beg" means "I command." What admirable politeness, which only succeeds in changing the meaning of words so that every word is a command! For my own part, I would rather Emile were rude than arrogant, that he should say "Do this" as a request, rather than "Please" as a command. What concerns me is not the term that he uses but the meaning that he gives to it.
[242:] There is such a thing as excessive severity as well as excessive indulgence, and both should be equally avoided. If you let children suffer you risk their health and life; you make them miserable now. If you take too many pains to spare them every kind of discomfort you are laying up much unhappiness for them in the future; you are making them delicate and over-sensitive; you are taking them out of their place among men, a place to which they must sooner or later return in spite of all your pains. You will say I am falling into the same mistake as those bad fathers whom I blamed for sacrificing the present happiness of their children to a future which may never be theirs.
[243:] Not so. For the freedom I give my pupil makes up for the slight hardships to which he is exposed. I see little rascals playing in the snow, stiff and blue with cold, scarcely able to move their fingers. They could go and warm themselves if they chose, but they do not. If you forced them to come in they would feel the harshness of constraint a hundred times more than the sharpness of the cold. So what are you complaining about? Shall I make your child miserable by exposing him to hardships which he is perfectly ready to endure? I do what is good for him in the present moment by letting him be free; I do what is good for him in the future good by arming him against the evils he will have to bear. If he had his choice to be my pupil or yours, would he hesitate even for a moment?
[244:] Can one imagine that true happiness is possible for anyone outside of his constitution? And is not trying to spare man all the ills of his species an effort to remove him from his constitution? Indeed I maintain that to enjoy great goodness he must experience slight ills; such is his nature. If the physical is too healthy the moral will be corrupted. A man who knew nothing of suffering would not feel tenderness towards humanity nor the sweetness of pity. His heart would be moved by nothing; he would be unsociable, a monster among his fellow men.
[245:] Do you know the surest way to make your child miserable? Let him have everything he wants; for as his wants increase in proportion to the ease with which they are satisfied, you will be compelled, sooner or later, to refuse his demands, and this unlooked-for refusal will hurt him more than the lack of what he wants. First he'll want the cane that you are holding, soon he'll want your watch, then the bird that flies, or the star that shines above him. He will want everything that he sees. Unless you were God himself, how could you satisfy him?
[246:] It is a disposition natural to man to regard as his own everything that is in his power. In this sense Hobbes' principle is true up to a certain point. Multiply both our wishes and the means of satisfying them, and each will make himself the master of all. Thus the child who has only to want something in order to obtain it thinks himself the owner of the universe; he regards all men as his slaves. And finally when one is forced to refuse him something, he, believing anything is possible when he asks for it, takes the refusal as an act of rebellion. All the reasons you give him while he is still too young to reason are so many pretences in his eyes; in all of that he sees only ill will. The sense of a so-called injustice embitters his disposition; he hates every one. Though he has never felt grateful for kindness, he resents all opposition.
[247:] How could I conceive that a child thus dominated by anger and devoured by the fiercest passions could ever be happy? Him happy? He is a despot, at once the vilest of slaves and the most miserable of creatures. I have known children raised in this way who expected you to knock the house down, to give them the weather-vane on the steeple, to stop a regiment on the march so that they might listen to the band, and who, without listening to anyone, would pierce the air with their cries as soon as they were not obeyed. Everyone strove vainly to please them. Since their desires were stimulated by the ease with which they got their own way, they set their hearts on impossibilities, and found themselves face to face with opposition and difficulty, pain and grief. Always whining, always rebellious, always in a rage, they spent their days crying and complaining. Were these beings so fortunate? Weakness combined with domination produces nothing but folly and misery. One spoiled child beats the table; another whips the sea. They may beat and whip in vain before they find contentment.
[248:] If these ideas of empire and tyranny make them miserable during childhood, what about when they grow up, when their relations with their fellow-men begin to expand and multiply? They are used to finding everything give way to them; what a painful surprise to enter society and meet with opposition on every side, to be crushed beneath the weight of a universe which they expected to move at will.
[249:] Their insolent manners, their childish vanity, only draw down upon them mortification, scorn, and mockery; they swallow insults like water. Sharp experience soon teaches them that they have realised neither their position nor their strength. Being unable to do everything, they think they can do nothing. They are daunted by unexpected obstacles, degraded by the scorn of men. They become base, cowardly, and deceitful, and fall as far below their true level as they formerly soared above it.
[250:] Let us come back to the first rule. Nature has made children to be loved and helped, but did it make them to be obeyed and feared? Has nature given them an imposing manner, a stern eye, a loud and threatening voice with which to make people wary of them? I understand how the roaring of the lion frightens the other beasts, so that they tremble when they behold his terrible mane, but of all unseemly, hateful, and ridiculous sights, was there ever anything like a group of statesmen, with their leader in front of them in his ceremonial robes, bowing down before a swaddled babe, addressing him in pompous phrases, while he cries and drools in reply?
[251:] If we consider childhood itself, is there in the world a being weaker and more miserable, more at the mercy of everything that surrounds it, who has a greater need of pity, care, and affection, than a child? Does it not seem as if his gentle face and touching appearance were intended to interest every one on behalf of his weakness and to make them eager to help him? And what is there more offensive, more contrary to order, than the sight of an unruly or imperious child commanding those about him and impudently taking on the tones of a master towards those without whom he would perish?
[252:] On the other hand, is it not clear that the weakness of the first age enchains children in so many ways that it is barbarous to add our own whims to this subjection by depriving them of the limited freedom that they do have -- a freedom which they can scarcely abuse and the loss of which will do so little good to them or us? If there is nothing more ridiculous than a haughty child, there is nothing that claims our pity like a timid child. Since civil servitude begins with the age of reason, then why anticipate this by private servitude? Allow one moment of life to be free from this yoke that nature has not imposed upon it. Leave to the child the exercise of his natural freedom, which, for a time at least, keeps him away from the vices contracted in slavery. Let harsh masters and those fathers who are the slaves of their children both come forward with their petty objections; and before they boast of their own methods, let them for once learn the method of nature.
[253:] I return to practical matters. I have already said your child must not get what he asks, but what he needs;
[note 22] he must never act from obedience, but from necessity. Thus the very words obey and command will be excluded from his vocabulary, still more those of duty and obligation. But the words strength, necessity, weakness, and constraint must have a large place in it. Before the age of reason it is impossible to form any idea of moral beings or social relations. One must thus avoid as much as possible the use of words which express these ideas lest the child at an early age should attach wrong ideas to them, ideas which you cannot or will not destroy when he is older. The first mistaken idea he gets into his head is the germ of error and vice; it is the first step that needs watching. Act in such a way that while he only notices external objects his ideas are confined to sensations; let him only see the physical world around him. If not, you may be sure that either he will not hear you at all, or that he will form of this moral world you speak about some farfetched notions that you will never erase as long as he lives.
[254:] To reason with children was Locke's chief maxim. It is even more in vogue today. Its success however does not seem to me strong enough to give it credit; for me I see nothing more stupid that these children with whom people reasoned so much. Of all man's faculties, reason, which is, so to speak, the one composed of all the others, is the one that develops with the most difficulty and the latest, and yet you want to use it to develop the earlier ones! The culmination of a good education is to make a man reasonable, and you claim to raise a child with reason! You begin at the wrong end; you make the end the means. If children understood reason they would not need education. But by talking to them from their earliest age in a language they do not understand you accustom them to manipulate with words, to control all that is said to them, to think themselves as wise as their teachers, to become argumentative and rebellious. And whatever you think you gain from motives of reason you really gain from the greediness, or fear, or vanity, which you are always forced to add to your reasoning.
[255:] Most of the moral lessons which are and can be given to children may be reduced to this formula:
[256:] Master. You must not do that. Child. Why not? Master. Because it is wrong. Child. Wrong ! What is wrong? Master. What is forbidden you. Child. Why is it wrong to do what is forbidden? Master. You will be punished for disobeying. Child. I will do it when no one is looking. Master. We will keep an eye on you. Child. I will hide. Master. We will ask you what you were doing. Child. I will tell a lie. Master. You must not tell lies. Child. Why must not I tell lies? Master. Because it is wrong, etc.
[257:] That is the inevitable circle. Go beyond it, and the child will not understand you. What sort of use is there in such teaching? I should greatly like to know what you would substitute for this dialogue. It would have puzzled Locke himself. It is no part of a child's business to know right and wrong, to perceive the reason for a man's duties.
[258:] Nature wants children to be children before they are men. If we try to pervert this order we shall produce a forced fruit that will have neither ripeness nor flavor and that will soon spoil. We will have young doctors and old children. Childhood has its ways of seeing, thinking, and feeling that are proper to it. Nothing is less sensible than to try and substitute our ways. I would like no more to require a young child be five feet tall than that he have judgement at the age of ten. Indeed, what use would reason be to him at that age? It is the curb of strength, and the child does not need this curb.
[259:] In trying to persuade your pupils of the duty of obedience you add to this so-called persuasion force and threats, or still worse, flattery and bribes. Thus attracted by self-interest or constrained by force, they pretend to be convinced by reason. They see very well that obedience is to their advantage and disobedience to their disadvantage as soon as you perceive one or the other. But since you only demand disagreeable things of them, and since it is always painful to do another's will, they hide themselves so that they may do as they please, persuaded that they are doing well if no one knows of their disobedience, but ready, if found out, to admit they are in the wrong for fear of worse evils. Since the rationale for duty is beyond their age, there is not a man in the world who could make them really aware of it. But the fear of punishment, the hope of forgiveness, importunity, the difficulty of answering, wrings from them as many confessions as you want; and you think you have convinced them when you have only wearied or frightened them.
[260:] What is the result of all this? In the first place, by imposing on them a duty which they do not feel, you make them disinclined to submit to your tyranny and turn them away from loving you. You teach them to become deceitful, false, liars in order to extort rewards or escape punishment. Finally, by accustoming them to conceal a secret motive under an apparent one, you yourself give them the means of ceaselessly abusing you, of depriving you of the means of knowing their real character, and of answering you and others with empty words whenever they have the chance. Laws, you say, though binding on conscience, exercise the same constraint over grown men. I agree, but what are these men if not children spoiled by education? This is exactly what one must avoid. Use force with children and reason with men; this is the natural order. The wise man needs no laws.
[261:] Treat your pupil according to his age. Put him in his place from the first, and keep him there so well that he does not try to leave it. Then before he knows what wisdom is, he will be practising its most important lesson. Never command him to do anything, whatever in the world it may be. Do not let him even imagine that you claim to have any authority over him. He must know only that he is weak and you are strong, that his condition and yours put him at your mercy. Let him know this, let him learn it, let him feel it. At an early age let his haughty head feel the heavy yoke which nature imposes upon man, the heavy yoke of necessity under which every finite being must bow. Let him see this necessity in things, not in the whims
[note 23] of man. Let the curb that restrains him be force, not authority. If there is something he should not do, do not forbid him, but prevent him without explanation or reasoning. What you grant him, grant it at his first word without sollicitations or pleading, above all without conditions. Grant with pleasure, refuse only with repugnance; but let your refusal be irrevocable so that no entreaties move you. Let your "No," once uttered, be a wall of bronze against which the child may have to exhaust his strength five or six times in order not to be tempted again to overthrow it.
[262:] It is thus that you will make him patient, equable, resigned, peaceful, even when he does not get all he wants. For it is in man's nature to bear patiently with the necessity of things but not with the ill-will of others. A child never rebels against "There is none left," unless he thinks the reply is false. Moreover, there is no middle course; you must either make no demands on him at all, or else you must fashion him to perfect obedience. The worst education of all is to leave him hesitating between his own will and yours, constantly disputing whether you or he is master. I would rather a hundred times that he were master.
[263:] It is very strange that ever since people began to think about raising children they should have imagined no other way of guiding them other than emulation, jealousy, envy, vanity, greediness, cowardice -- all the most dangerous passions, the quickest to ferment, and the most likely to corrupt the soul even before the body is formed. With each precocious instruction which you try to force into children's minds you plant a vice in the depths of their hearts. Senseless teachers think they are doing wonders when they are making their pupils evil in order to teach them what goodness is. And then they tell us gravely, "Such is man." Yes, such is the man that you have made.
[264:] Every means has been tried except one. the one precisely that could succeed -- well-regulated freedom. One should not undertake to raise a child unless one knows how to guide him where one wants by the laws of the possible and the impossible alone. The limits of both being equally inknown, they can be extended or contracted around him at will. Without a murmur the child is restrained, urged on, held back, only by the bands of necessity. One can make him supple and docile solely by the force of things, without any chance for vice to spring up in him. For passions never become aroused so long as they have no effect.
[265:] Do not give your pupil any kind of verbal lessons; he should receive them only through experience. Do not inflict on him any kind of punishment, for he does not know what it is to do wrong. Never make him beg your pardon, for he does not know how to offend you. Deprived of all morality in his actions, he can do nothing that is morally wrong, and he deserves neither punishment nor reprimand.
[266:] Already I see the frightened reader comparing this child with those of our time. He is mistaken. The perpetual annoyance imposed upon your pupils irritates their vivacity; the more constrained they are under your eyes, the more stormy they are the moment they escape. Whenever they can they must make up for the harsh constraint that you that you hold them in. Two schoolboys from the city will do more damage in the country than all the children of the village. Shut up a young gentleman and a young peasant in a room; the former will have upset and smashed everything before the latter has stirred from his place. Why is this, unless that the one hastens to abuse a moment's licence, while the other, always sure of freedom, does not use it rashly? And yet the village children, often flattered or constrained, are still very far from the state in which I would have them kept.
[267:] Let us lay it down as an incontestible maxim that the first movements of nature are always right. There is no original perversity in the human heart. There is not a single vice about which one cannot say how and whence it came. The only passion natural to man is amour de soi or amour-propre taken in an extended sense. This amour-propre in itself or relative to ourselves is good and useful, and since it has no necessary rapport to others it is in this regard naturally indifferent: it only becomes good or evil by what it is applied to and by the relations it is given. Until the appearance of reason, which is the guide of amour-propre, the main thing is that the child should do nothing because you are watching him or listening to him; in a word, nothing because of other people, but only what nature asks of him. Then he will only do good.
[268:] I do not mean to say that he will never do any mischief, never hurt himself, never break an expensive item if you leave it within his reach. He might do much damage without doing wrong, since wrong-doing depends on the harmful intention which will never be his. If once he meant to do harm, his whole education would already be lost; he would be almost hopelessly bad.
[269:] Greed considers some things wrong which are not wrong in the eyes of reason. By leaving children in full liberty to exercise their playfulness , you must put anything that it could ruin out of their way, and leave nothing fragile or costly within their reach. Let the room be furnished with plain and solid furniture: no mirrors, china, or objects of luxury. As for Emile, who I will raise in the country, he will have a room just like a peasant's. What good is it to decorate it with so much care when he will spend so little time in it? But I am mistaken; he will decorate it himself, and we shall soon see how.
[270:] If, in spite of your precautions, the child happens to do some damage, if he breaks some useful article, do not punish him for your carelessness. Do not even scold him. Let him hear no word of reproach, do not even let him see that he has annoyed you. Behave just as if the thing had broken by itself. You may consider you have done great things if you have managed to say nothing.
[271:] Dare I express here the greatest, the most important, the most useful rule of all education? It is not to gain time but to lose it. Common readers, excuse my paradoxes. Paradoxes are necessary when one reflects, and whatever you may say I would rather be a man of paradox than a man of prejudice. The most dangerous period in human life lies between birth and the age of twelve. It is the time when errors and vices spring up, without one yet having any instrument for destroying them; and when the instrument comes, the roots have gone too deep to be pulled up. If children sprang at one bound from their mother's breast to the age of reason, the present type of education would suit them. But natural growth calls for a completely different education. One must do nothing with their soul until it has all its faculties. For while it is blind it cannot see the torch you offer it, nor can it follow through the vast expanse of ideas a path so faintly traced by reason that the best eyes can scarcely follow it.
[272:] The first education ought thus to be purely negative. It consists not at all in teaching virtue or truth, but in preserving the heart from vice and the mind from error. If you could do nothing and let nothing be done, if you could bring your pupil healthy and robust to the age of twelve without knowing how to distinguish his right hand from his left, the eyes of his understanding would be open to reason as soon as you began to teach him. Without prejudice and without habits, there would be nothing in him to counteract the effects of your labours. In your hands he would soon become the wisest of men; by doing nothing to begin with, you would end with a prodigy of education.
[273:] Go in a different direction from the usual one and you will almost always do right. Since they want their child to be a doctor instead of a child, fathers and teachers think it never too soon to scold, correct, reprimand, flatter, threaten, promise, instruct, and reason. Do better than they; be reasonable and do not reason with your pupil. More especially do not try to make him approve of what he dislikes; for if reason is always connected with disagreeable matters, you make it distasteful to him, you discredit it at an early age in a mind not yet ready to understand it. Exercise his body, his limbs, his senses, his strength, but keep his mind idle as long as you can. Distrust all opinions which appear before the judgment to discriminate between them. Restrain and ward off strange impressions; and to prevent the birth of evil do not hasten to do good, for goodness is only possible when enlightened by reason. Regard all delays as so much time gained; it is to gain much to approach one's goal without a loss. Let childhood to ripen in children. Has some lesson finally become necessary? Beware of giving it to them today if it can be put off without danger until tomorrow.
[274:] Another consideration confirms the utility of this method. One must be familiar with the particular genius of the child in order to know what moral regime is best for him. Every mind has its own form in accordance with which it must be governed; and the success of the pains taken depends largely on the fact that he is controlled in this way and no other. Wise man, take time to observe nature. Watch your pupil well before you say a word to him; first leave the germ of his character free to show itself. Do not constrain him in anything, the better to see him as he really is. Do you think this time of liberty is wasted for him? On the contrary, your pupil will be the better employed, for this is the way you yourself will learn not to lose a single moment when time is of more value. If, however, you begin to act before you know what to do, you act randomly. You may make mistakes, and must retrace your steps; you will be further from your goal than if you had been less pressed to reach it. Do not be like the miser who loses much out of fear of losing a little. Sacrifice the time in early childhood that you regain with interest at a more advanced age. The wise physician does not hastily give prescriptions at first sight but studies the temperament of the sick man before he prescribes anything. The treatment is begun later, but the patient is cured, whereas the hasty doctor kills him.
[275:] But where will we find a place for our child so as to bring him up as a senseless being, an automaton? Will we keep him on the moon, or on a desert island? Will we remove him from all humans? In society will he not always be faced with the spectacle and the example of the passions of other people? Will he never see children of his own age? Will he not see his parents, his neighbours, his nurse, his governess, his lackey, his tutor himself, who after all will not be an angel?
[276:] This objection is solid and real. But did I tell you that an education according to nature would be an easy task? Oh, men ! Is it my fault that you have made difficult everything that is good? I sense these difficulties, I accept them; perhaps they are insurmountable. But it is always certain that by trying to avoid them one does avoid them up to a certain point. I show the end that must be proposed. I do not say we can attain it, but I do say that whoever comes nearest to it will have succeeded the best.
[277:] Remember that before daring to undertake forming a man one must be a man himself. One must find within oneself the example that one must propose. While the child is still without knowledge one has time to prepare everything that comes near him, so that he will be confronted only with those objects which are suitable to his sight. Make yourself respectable to every one, begin to make yourself loved so that each seeks to please you, so that they may try to please you. You will not be master of the child if you are not the master of all that surrounds him; and this authority will never suffice if it is not founded on an estime for virtue. It is not a question of emptying your purse and pouring out handfuls of money; I have never seen money make anyone be loved. You must neither be miserly nor hard, nor must you merely pity misery when you can relieve it. But in vain will you only open your purse, for if you do not also open your heart the hearts of others will always be closed to you. This is your time, these are your cares, your affections; it is yourself that you must give. For whatever you do, people always perceive that your money is not you. There are proofs of kindly interest which produce more results and are really more useful than any gift. How many of the sick and wretched have more need of comfort than of alms? How many of the oppressed need protection rather than money? Reconcile those who are fighting, prevent lawsuits, incline children to duty, fathers to kindness; promote happy marriages; prevent annoyances; freely use the credit of your pupil's parents on behalf of the weak who cannot obtain justice, the weak who are oppressed by the powerful. Declare yourself proudly the protector of the poor. Be just, humane, benevolent. Do not give only alms; give charity. Works of mercy sooth more ills than money. Love others and they will love you; serve them and they will serve you; be their brother and they will be your children.
[278:] This is one reason why I want to bring up Emile in the country, far from those miserable lackeys, the most degraded of men except their masters; far from the dark customs of the city, whose gilded surface makes them seductive and contagious to children; whereas the vices of peasants, unadorned and in their naked grossness, are more fitted to repel than to seduce as long as there is no motive for imitating them.
[279:] In the village a tutor will have much more control over the things he wishes to show the child. His reputation, his words, his example, will have a weight they would never have in the city. He is of use to every one, so every one is eager to oblige him, to win his esteem, to appear before the pupil what the tutor would have him be. If vice is not corrected, public scandal is at least avoided, which is all that our present purpose requires.
[280:] Cease blaming others for your own faults. Children are corrupted less by what they see than by what you tell them. With your endless preaching, moralising, and pedantry, for one idea you give your pupils, believing it to be good, you give them twenty more which are good for nothing. You are full of what is going on in your own mind, and you fail to see the effect you produce on theirs. In the continual flow of words with which you overwhelm them, do you think there is none which they get hold of in a wrong sense? Do you suppose they do not make their own comments on your long-winded explanations, that they do not find material for the construction of a system they can understand -- one which they will use against you when they get the chance?
[281:] Listen to a little fellow who has just been indoctrinated. Let him chatter freely, ask questions, and talk at his ease, and you will be surprised to find the strange forms your arguments have assumed in his mind. He confuses everything and turns everything upside down. He makes you impatient and saddens you sometimes by his unforeseen objections. He reduces you to be silent yourself or to silence him; and what can he think of silence in one who is so fond of talking? If ever he gains this advantage and is aware of it, farewell education. From that moment all is lost; he is no longer trying to learn, he is trying to refute you.
[282:] Zealous teachers, be simple, discrete, and reticent. Be in no hurry to act unless to prevent the actions of others. Again and again I say, reject, if it may be, a good lesson for fear of giving a bad one. Beware of playing the tempter in this world, which nature intended as an earthly paradise for men, and do not attempt to give the innocent child the knowledge of good and evil. Since you cannot prevent the child learning by what he sees outside himself, restrict your own efforts to impressing those examples on his mind in the form best suited for him.
[283:] The explosive passions produce a great effect upon the child who witnesses them because they have very obvious signs that shock him and force him to pay attention. Anger especially is so noisy in its rage that it is impossible not to perceive it if you are within reach. You must not ask yourself whether this is an opportunity for a pedagogue to enter into a fine discourse. No discourses! Nothing, not a word. Let the child come to you. Impressed by what he has seen, he will not fail to question you. The answer is simple; it is drawn from the very things which have appealed to his senses. He sees a flushed face, flashing eyes, a threatening gesture, he hears cries; everything shows that the body is ill at ease. Tell him plainly, without affectation or mystery, " This poor man is ill, he is in a fever." You may take the opportunity of giving him in a few words some idea of disease and its effects; for that too belongs to nature, and is one of the bonds of necessity which he must recognise.
[284:] By means of this idea, which is not false in itself, might he not early on acquire a certain aversion to giving way to excessive passions, which he regards as diseases; and do you not think that such a notion, given at the right moment, will produce a more wholesome effect than the most tedious sermon on morals? But consider the after-effects of this idea. You have authority, if ever you find it necessary, to treat the rebellious child as a sick child; to keep him in his room, in bed if need be, to diet him, to make him afraid of his growing vices, to make him hate and dread them without ever regarding as a punishment the strict measures you will perhaps have to use for his recovery. If it happens that you yourself in a moment's heat depart from the calm and self-control which you should aim at, do not try to conceal your fault, but tell him frankly, with a gentle reproach, "My friend, you have made me ill."
[285:] Moreover, it is a matter of great importance that no notice should he taken in his presence of the quaint sayings which result from the simplicity of the ideas in which he is brought up, nor should they be quoted in a way he can understand. A foolish laugh may destroy six months' work and do irreparable damage for life. I cannot repeat too often that to control the child one must often control oneself. I picture my little Emile at the height of a dispute between two neighbours going up to the fiercest of them and saying in a tone of pity, "You are ill, I am very sorry for you." This speech will no doubt have its effect on the spectators and perhaps on the disputants. Without laughter, scolding, or praise I should take him away, willing or no, before he could see this result, or at least before be could think about it; and I should make haste to turn his thoughts to other things so that he would soon forget all about it.
[286:] My design is not to enter into every detail, but only to expose general maxims and to give illustrations in cases of difficulty. I agree that it is impossible to raise a child up to the age of twelve in the midst of society without giving him some idea of the relations between one man and another, and of the morality of human actions. It is enough to try to give him these necessary notions as late as possible, and when they become inevitable to limit them to present needs, so that he may neither think himself master of everything nor do harm to others without knowing or caring. There are calm and gentle characters which can be led a long way in their first innocence without any danger; but there are also stormy dispositions whose passions develop early. You must hasten to make men of them lest you should have to keep them in chains.
[287:] Our first duties are to ourselves; our first feelings are centered on self; all our instincts are at first directed to our own preservation and our own welfare. Thus the first notion of justice springs not from what we owe to others but from what is due to us. Here is another error in popular methods of education. If you talk to children of their duties, and not of their rights, you are beginning at the wrong end and telling them what they cannot understand, what cannot be of any interest to them.
[288:] If I had to lead a child such as I have just described, I should say to myself: A child does not attack people
[note 24] but things; and he soon learns by experience to respect those older and stronger than himself. Things, however, do not defend themselves. Therefore the first idea he needs is not that of liberty but of property, and in order that he may get this idea he must have something of his own. It is useless to enumerate his clothes, furniture, and playthings; although he uses these he knows not how or why he has come by them. To tell him they were given him is little better, for giving implies having; so here is property before his own, and it is the principle of property that you want to teach him. Moreover, giving is a convention, and the child as yet has no idea of conventions. I hope my reader will note, in this and many other cases, how people think they have taught children thoroughly, when they have only thrust on them words which have no intelligible meaning to them.
[note 25]
[289:] We must therefore go back to the origin of property, for that is where the first idea of it must begin. The child, living in the country, will have gotten some idea of field work; eyes and leisure suffice for that, and he will have both. In every age, and especially in childhood, we want to create, to copy, to produce, to give all the signs of power and activity. He will not have seen the gardener at work more than two times -- sowing, planting, and growing vegetables -- before he will want to garden himself.
[290:] According to the principles I have already laid down, I will not oppose his desire; on the contrary, I shall approve of his plan, share his taste, and work with him, not for his pleasure but my own; at least, so he thinks. I shall be his under-gardener, and dig the ground for him till his arms are strong enough to do it. He will take possession of it by planting a bean, and this is surely a more sacred possession, and one more worthy of respect, than that of Nuñes Balboa, who took possession of South America in the name of the King of Spain by planting his banner on the coast of the Southern Sea.
[291:] We come to water the beans every day, we watch them coming up with the greatest delight. I increase this delight by saying, Those belong to you. To explain what that word ''belong" means, I show him how he has given his time, his labour, and his trouble, his very self to it; that in this ground there is something of himself which he can claim against anyone else, just as he could withdraw his arm from the hand of another man who wanted to hold it against his will.
[292:] One fine day he hurries up with his watering-can in his hand. What a sad scene! All the beans are pulled up, the soil is dug over, you can scarcely find the place. Ah, what has become of my labour, my work, the beloved fruits of my care and sweat? Who has stolen my property? Who has taken my beans? The young heart revolts; the first feeling of injustice brings its sorrow and bitterness. Tears come in torrents; the devastated child fills the air with sobs and cries. I share his sorrow and anger; we look around us, we make inquiries. At last we discover that the gardener did it. We send for him.
[293:] But we are greatly mistaken. The gardener, hearing our complaint, begins to complain louder than we: What, gentlemen, was it you who wrecked my work? I had sown some Maltese melons; the seed was given me as something quite precious and which I meant to give you as a treat when they were ripe. But you have planted your miserable beans and destroyed my melons, which were coming up so nicely and which I cannot replace. You have done me an irreparable wrong, and you have deprived yourselves of the pleasure of eating some exquisite melons.
[294:] Jean Jacques: My poor Robert, you must forgive us. You had given your labour and your pains to it. I see we were wrong to spoil your work, but we will send to Malta for some more seed for you, and we will never dig the ground again without finding out if some one else has had his hand in it before us. Robert: Well, gentlemen, you need not trouble yourselves, for there is no more fallow land. I dig what my father tilled. Every one does the same, and all the land you see has been occupied for a long time. Emile: Mr. Robert, do people often lose the seed of Maltese melons? Robert: No indeed sir; we do not often find little gentlemen as silly as you. No one touches the garden of his neighbor; every one respects other people's work so that his own may be safe. Emile: But I don't have a garden. Robert: What's that to me? If you spoil mine I won't let you walk around here, for you see I do not want to lose my work. Jean Jacques: Could not we suggest an arrangement with this kind Robert? Let him give my young friend and myself a corner of his garden to cultivate, on condition that he has half the crop. Robert: You may have it free. But remember I shall dig up your beans if you touch my melons.
[295:] In this attempt to show how a child may be taught certain primitive ideas we see how the idea of property goes back naturally to the right of the first occupant by means of labor. That is plain and simple, and quite within the child's grasp. From that to the rights of property and exchange there is but a step, after which you must stop short.
[296:] You also see that an explanation which I can give in a couple of pages in writing may take a year in practice, for in the course of moral ideas we cannot advance too slowl
[550:] Although the whole course of man's life up to adolescence is a time of weakness, there comes a point during this first age when his strength progresses faster than his needs, and the growing creature who is still weak in an absolute sense becomes relatively strong. Since his needs are not fully developed his present strength is more than enough for them. As a man he would be very weak, but as a child he is very strong.
[551:] Where does the weakness of man come from? From the inequality between his strength and his desires. It is our passions that make us weak, for to satisfy them requires more strength than nature gives us. Diminish desires, therefore, and it is as if you had increased strength. He who can do more than he desires has strength left over. He is certainly a very strong being. Here we are in the third stage of childhood, the one that I will be speaking of now. I continue to call it childhood for lack of the proper term with which to describe it, for this age approaches adolescence without being yet the age of puberty.
[552:] At about twelve or thirteen the child's strength develops far more rapidly than his needs. The strongest and fiercest of the passions is still unknown. Its very organ remains in a state of imperfection and in order to emerge from that state seems to be waiting for the force of the child's will. Largely insensitive to the assaults of air and the seasons, the child's growing warmth takes the place of a coat; his appetite substitutes for seasoning. Everything that can nourish is good at this age. If he is sleepy he stretches himself on the ground and goes to sleep. He sees himself surrounded by everything that is necessary to him. No imaginary need torments him; public opinion means nothing to him; his desires extend no further than his arms. Not only can he be sufficient to himself, but he has strength beyond what is necessary to him. This is the only time in his life that this will be the case.
[553:] I anticipate an objection. No one will say that the child has more needs than I give him, but they will deny that he has the strength that I attribute to him. You forget that I am speaking of my own pupil, not of those walking dolls who travel from one room to another, who toil indoors and carry bundles of paper. I will be told that manly strength appears only with manhood, that the vital spirits, distilled in their proper vessels and spreading through the whole body, can alone make the muscles firm, sensitive, tense, and springy, can alone cause real strength. This is the philosophy of the study; I appeal to that of experience. Out in the country I see tall boys hoeing, digging, guiding the plough, filling the wine-cask, driving the cart, like their fathers. You would think they were grown men if their voices did not betray them. Even in our towns, young workers -- ironsmiths, toolmakers, farriers -- are almost as strong as their masters and would not be less skillful if they had practiced as long. If there is a difference, and I agree there is, it is, I repeat, much less than the difference between the stormy passions of the man and the limited desires of a child. Moreover, here we are talking about not only physical strength, but more especially about the strength and capacity of the mind which reinforces and directs the physical strength.
[554:] This interval in which the individual can do more than he wants, even though it is not the time of his greatest absolute strength, is, as I have said, the time of his greatest relative strength. It is the most precious time in his life, a time that comes only once. It is very short, all the more short since we will see in what follows the importance of using it right.
[555:] What will he thus do with this surplus of faculties and strengths that he has too much of at present and that will be lacking to him at another age? He will try to use it in tasks which will profit him when needed. He will project, so to speak, the surplus of his present being into the future. The robust child will make provision for the feeble man. But he will store his goods neither in banks that can be robbed nor in barns that are unfamiliar to him. To truly appropriate his acquisitions it will be in his arms, in his head, in himself that he will store them. Now is the time for work, instruction, and study. And note that it is not I who makes this choice arbitrarily; it is nature itself that has pointed the way.
[556:] Human intelligence has its limits, and not only can a man not know everything, but he cannot even know in its entirety the little that other men know. Since the contrary of every false proposition is a truth, the number of truths is as unfathomable as the number of errors. We must, therefore, choose what to teach as well as when to teach it. Of the knowledge within our reach some is false, some is useless, some merely serves to feed the pride of him who has it. Only the small amount of knowledge which really contributes to our well-being merits the research of a wise man and therefore of a child whom one would like to make wise. It is not a question of knowing what is, but only of what is useful.
[557:] From this small number of things we must also subtract those truths which require a fully formed mind in order to be understood, those which suppose a knowledge of man's relations to his fellow-men -- a knowledge which no child can acquire, those which, although true in themselves, lead an inexperienced mind to think falsely about other subjects.
[558:] Thus we are thus reduced to a very small circle relative to the existence of things. But what an immense sphere this circle still forms when measured by the child's mind! Dark shadows of the human understanding, what rash hand will dare to touch your veil? What abyss do I see our vain sciences opening up before this poor child! You should tremble, you who would wish to lead him down these perilous pathways and to draw open, before his eyes, the sacred drapery of nature. Be assured beforehand of his head and your own; beware that it may make either one or both of you dizzy. Beware of the specious attraction of falsehood and the intoxicating fumes of pride. Remember, remember always, that ignorance never did any harm, that error alone is fatal, and that we do not lose our way because of what we do not know but because of what we think we know.
[559:] His progress in geometry may serve as a test and a true measure of the growth of his intelligence, but as soon as he can distinguish between what is useful and what is not, it is important to use much discretion and art to lead him towards speculative studies. For example, do you want him to find a mean proportional between two lines? Begin by making him need to find a square equal to a given rectangle. If two mean proportionals are required, you must first make the problem of duplicating a cube interesting to him, etc. See how we are gradually approaching the moral ideas which distinguish between good and evil! Until now we have known no law but necessity; now we have regard for what is useful; soon we will arrive at what is right and good.
[560:] The diverse faculties of man are animated by the same instinct. The activity of the body which seeks development is succeeded by the activity of the mind which seeks instruction. At first children are only restless; then they become curious; and this curiosity, well directed, is the motivating force of the age at which we have arrived. Let us always distinguish between tendencies that come from nature and those that come from opinion. There is one ardor for learning which is founded only on the desire to be estimed as a scholar, and there is another which springs from a curiosity, natural to man, about all things far or near which may affect himself. The innate desire for well-being and the impossibility of its complete satisfaction make him search ceaselessly for fresh means of contributing to its satisfaction. This is the first principle of curiosity, a principle natural to the human heart, though its growth is proportional to the development of our passions and knowledge. Imagine a philosopher left on a desert island with his books and instruments, certain that he must spend the rest of his life there; he would hardly trouble himself about the system of the world, the laws of attraction, or the differential calculus. He might never even open a book again; but he would never rest till he had explored the furthest corner of his island, however large it might be. Let us therefore omit from our early studies such knowledge for which man has no natural taste and confine ourselves to that which instinct impels us to study.
[561:] The island of the human race is the earth; and the object the most striking to our eyes is the sun. As soon as we begin to move beyond ourselves our first observations must fall on one or the other. Thus the philosophy of almost all primitive people is mainly directed at the imaginary divisions of the earth and the divinity of the sun.
[562:] What a sudden shift, you will perhaps say. Just a moment ago we were concerned only with what touches ourselves, with our immediate environment; now all at once we are traversing the globe and leaping to the ends of the universe. This change is the result of our growing strength and of the natural inclinations of the mind. In the state of weakness and insufficiency, the cares for our own conservation concentrate our attention on ourselves. In the state of power and of force, the desire to extend our being carries us beyond ourselves and thrusts us as far into the distance as possible. But since the intellectual world is still unknown to us, our thinking will go no further than our eyes, and our understanding will only reach the spaces it can measure.
[563:] Let us transform our sensations into ideas, but do not let us jump all at once from sensible objects to intellectual objects. It is by the former that we should arrive at the latter. In the first operations of the mind, may the senses always be its guide. No book but the world, no teaching but that of fact. The child who reads does not think, he only reads. He is not being taught; he is only learning words.
[564:] Make your child attentive to the phenomena of nature; soon you will make him curious. But to nurture his curiosity, never hasten to satisfy it. Put questions within his reach and let him solve them himself. Let him know nothing because you have told him, but because he has learnt it for himself. Let him not be taught science, let him invent it. If ever you substitute in his mind authority for reason, he will cease to reason; he will be a mere plaything of other people's opinion.
[565:] You wish to teach this child geography and you provide him with globes, spheres, and maps. What a lot of machines! Why all these symbols? Why not begin by showing him the object itself so that he may at least know what you are talking about?
[566:] One fine evening we are walking in a suitable place where the wide horizon gives us a full view of the setting sun, and we note the objects which mark the place where it sets. Next morning we return to the same place to breathe the fresh air before sunrise. We see the rays of light which announce the sun's approach; the glow increases, the east seems to be in flames; in the light we await the star a long time before it appears. At each moment we expect to see it. There it is at last! A shining point appears like a flash of lightning and soon fills the whole space; the veil of darkness rolls away, man perceives his dwelling place in fresh beauty. During the night the grass has assumed a fresher green; in the light of early dawn, and gilded by the first rays of the sun, it seems covered with a shining network of dew reflecting the light and colour. The birds raise their chorus of praise to greet the father of life; at this moment not one of them is quiet. Their gentle warbling is softer than by day, it expresses the langour of a peaceful waking. All these produce an impression of freshness which seems to reach the very soul. It is a brief hour of enchantment that no man can resist; a sight so grand, so fair, so delicious, that none can behold it unmoved.
[567:] Full of the enthusiasm that he is experiencing, the teacher wishes to impart it to the child. He expects to rouse his emotion by drawing attention to his own. Pure stupidity! The life of the spectacle of nature is in the heart of man; to see it one must feel it. The child sees the objects themselves, but he can not perceive the relations that link them; he cannot hear the sweet harmony of their concert. It needs knowledge that he has not yet acquired, feelings he has not yet experienced, to receive the complex impression which results all at once from these different sensations. If he has not wandered over arid plains, if his feet have not been scorched by the burning sands of the desert, if he has not breathed the hot and oppressive air reflected from the glowing rocks, how will he delight in the fresh air of a fine morning? The scent of flowers, the beauty of foliage, the moistness of the dew, the soft turf beneath his feet -- how will all these delight his senses? How will the song of the birds arouse voluptuous emotion if love and pleasure are still unknown to him? How will he behold with rapture the birth of this fair day, if his imagination cannot paint the joys with which it may be filled? Finally, how can he be moved by the beauty of the spectacle of nature if he is ignorant of the hand that formed it?
[568:] Never give the child speeches that he cannot understand. No descriptions, no eloquence, no figures of speech, no poetry. The time has not come for feeling or taste. Continue to be clear, simple, and cold; the time will come only too soon when you must adopt another tone.
[569:] Brought up in the spirit of our maxims, accustomed to make his own tools and not to appeal to others until he has recognized his own insufficiency, he will examine each new object he sees for a long time without saying anything. He thinks rather than questions. Be content, therefore, to show him things at at the right time. Then when you see that his curiosity is thoroughly aroused, ask him some brief question that will put him on the path to resolving it.
[570:] On the present occasion when you and he have carefully observed the rising sun, when you have made him notice the mountains and other objects visible from the same spot, after he has chattered freely about them, keep quiet for a few minutes as if lost in thought and then say, "I think the sun set over there last night; it rose here this morning. How can that be?" Do not say anything else; if he asks questions, do not answer them; talk of something else. Leave him by himself, and you can be sure that he will think about it.
[571:] In order that a child become accustomed to being attentive and really impressed by any truth of experience, he must spend anxious days before he discovers that truth. If he does not learn enough in this way, there is another way of drawing his attention to the matter. Turn the question around. If he does not know how the sun gets from the place where it sets to where it rises, he knows at least how it travels from from where it rises to where it sets; his eyes teach him that. Use the second question to throw light on the first; either your pupil is absolutely stupid or the analogy is too clear to be missed. This is his first lesson in cosmography.
[572:] As we always advance slowly from one sensible idea to another, and as we give time enough to each for him to become really familiar with it before we go on to another, and lastly as we never force our scholar's attention, there is still a long way from this first lesson to a knowledge of the course of the sun or the shape of the earth. But as all the apparent movements of the celestial bodies depend on the same principle and the first observation leads on to all the rest, less effort is needed, though more time, to proceed from the diurnal revolution to the calculation of eclipses than to get a thorough understanding of day and night.
[573:] Since the sun turns around the earth it describes a circle, and every circle must have a center; that we already know. This center cannot be seen, for it is in the middle of the earth, but we can mark out two opposite points on the earth's surface which correspond to it. A skewer passed through the three points and prolonged to the sky at either end would represent the earth's axis and the sun's daily course. A round spinning top revolving on its point represents the sky
[?] turning on its axis, the two points of the top are the two poles. The child will easily become acquainted with one of them -- I show him the tail of the Little Bear. Here is a another game for the dark. Little by little we get to know the stars, and from this comes a wish to know the planets and observe the constellations.
[574:] We saw the sun rise at midsummer; we shall see it rise at Christmas or some other fine winter's day, for you know we are not lazy and for us it is a game to brave the cold. I take care to make this second observation in the same place as the first, and if skillfully lead up to, one or another of us will certainly exclaim, "What a funny thing! The sun is not rising in the same place; here are our earlier land-marks, but it is rising over there. So there is a summer east and the winter east, etc." Young teacher, you are on the right track. These examples should show you how to teach the sphere without any difficulty, taking the earth for the earth and the sun for the sun.
[575:] In general never substitute the sign for the thing unless it is impossible to show the thing itself. For the child's attention is so taken up with the sign that he will forget the thing that is represented.
[576:] I consider the armillary sphere a clumsy disproportioned bit of apparatus. The confused circles and the strange figures described on it suggest witchcraft and frighten the child. The earth is too small, the circles too large and too numerous; some of them, the colures, for instance, are quite useless, and the thickness of the pasteboard gives them an appearance of solidity so that they are taken for circular masses having a real existence. And when you tell the child that these are imaginary circles he does not know what he is looking at and is none the wiser.
[577:] We are never able to put ourselves in the child's place, we fail to enter into his thoughts, we invest him with our own ideas, and while we are following our own chain of reasoning, we merely fill his head with errors and absurdities.
[578:] People debate about whether the method of studying science should be analytic or synthetic. It is not always necessary to choose between them. Sometimes the same experiments allow one to use both analysis and synthesis, and thus to guide the child by the method of instruction when he believes he is only analysing. Then, by using both at once, each method confirms the results of the other. Starting from opposite ends, without thinking of following the same road, he will unexpectedly reach their meeting place and this will be a delightful surprise. For example, I would begin geography at both ends and join to the study of the earth's revolution the measurement of its divisions, beginning in the place where we live. While the child is studying the sphere and is thus transported to the heavens, bring him back to the divisions of the earth and show him first his own home.
[579:] The first two points of geography will be the town where he lives and his father's country house, then the places in between, then the rivers near them, and finally the direction of the sun and how to find one's way by its aid. This is where everything comes together. Let him make his own map of all this, a very simple map, at first containing only two places. Others may be added from time to time as he is able to estimate their distance and position. You see at once what a good start we have given him by making his own eye his compass.
[580:] No doubt he will require some guidance in spite of this, but very little, and that little without his knowing it. If he goes wrong leave him alone; do not correct his mistakes. Wait quietly till he finds them out for himself and corrects them, or at most arrange something, as opportunity offers, which may show him his mistakes. If he never makes mistakes he will never learn anything thoroughly. Moreover, what he needs is not an exact knowledge of local topography but how to find out for himself. It matters little whether he carries maps in his head, provided he understands what they mean and has a clear idea of the art of making them. See what a difference there is already between the knowledge of your scholars and the ignorance of mine! They learn maps; he makes them. Here are fresh ornaments for his room.
[581:] Remember that the spirit of my instruction is not to teach the child many things, but to let only ideas that are right and clear enter his mind. I do not care if he knows nothing provided he in not mistaken, and I only acquaint him with truths to guard him against the errors he might put in their place. Reason and judgment come slowly, prejudices flock to us in crowds, and from them he must be preserved. But if you make science itself your object, you enter a bottomless and shoreless sea, a sea strewn with reefs from which you will never return. When I see a man in love with knowledge letting himself be seduced by its charms and running from one kind of learning to another without knowing how to stop, he seems to me like a child gathering shells on the sea-shore, now picking them up, then throwing them aside for others which he sees beyond them, then taking them again, till overwhelmed by their number and unable to choose between them, he flings them all away and returns home empty handed.
[582:] Time was long during early childhood; we only tried to pass our time for fear of using it badly. Now it is the other way; we do not have time enough for everything that would be useful. The passions, remember, are drawing near, and when they knock at the door your pupil will be attentive only to them. The peaceful age of intelligence is so short, it passes so rapidly, there are so many necessary uses for it, that it is insane to want to limit it to making the child into a scholar. It is not a question of teaching him the sciences, but to give him a taste for loving them and methods of learning them when this taste is more mature. That is very certainly a fundamental principle of all good education.
[583:] This is also the time to accustom him little by little to giving his sustained attention to a single object. But it should never be by constraint; rather, it should be pleasure or desire which produces this attention. One must take care not to overwhelm him or push him to boredom. Keep a careful eye on him therefore, and whatever happens, stop before he gets bored. For it is never as important that he learn than that he do nothing against his will.
[584:] If he asks questions let your answers be enough to nurture his curiosity but not enough to satisfy it. Above all, when you see that instead of asking for information he is just beating around the bush and overwhelming you with silly questions, stop immediately; for it is clear that he no longer cares about the matter in hand but simply wants to make you submit to his interrogations. One must have less regard for the words that he pronounces than for the motives which prompt him to speak. This warning, which was scarcely needed before, becomes of supreme importance when the child begins to reason.
[585:] There is a chain of general truths by means of which all the sciences hold to common principles and are developed each in its turn. This chain is the method of the philosophers. It is not the one that we are concerned with here. There is a completely different method by which one particular object suggests another and always points to the one that follows it. This order, which nourishes the curiosity and so arouses the attention required by every object in turn, is the order followed by most men, and it is the right order for all children. To take our bearings so as to make our maps we must find meridians. Two points of intersection between the equal shadows morning and evening supply an excellent meridian for a thirteen-year-old astronomer. But these meridians disappear, it takes time to trace them, and you are obliged to work in one place So much trouble and attention will in the end bore him. We foresaw this and are ready for it.
[586:] Again I must enter into minute and detailed explanations. I hear my readers murmur, but I am prepared to meet their disapproval; I will not sacrifice the most important part of this book to your impatience. You may think me as long-winded as you please; I have my own opinion about your complaints.
[587:] For a long time my pupil and I have noticed that some substances such as amber, glass, and wax, when well rubbed, attracted straws, while others did not. We accidentally discover a substance which has a more unusual property, that of attracting filings or other small particles of iron from a distance and without rubbing. How much time do we devote to this game to the exclusion of everything else! At last we discover that this property is communicated to the iron itself, which becomes, so to speak, magnetized. One day we go to a fair. A magician has a wax duck floating in a basin of water, and he makes it follow a bit of bread. We are greatly surprised, but we do not call him a wizard because we do not know what a wizard is. Continually struck by effects whose causes are unknown to us, we are in no hurry to make judgments, and we remain peacefully in ignorance till we find an occasion to leave it.
[588:] When we get home, as a result of discussing the duck at the fair, we try to imitate it. We take a needle thoroughly magnetised, we surround it in white wax which we fashion as best we can into the shape of a duck, with the needle running through the body and its head forming the beak. We put the duck in water and put the end of a key near its beak, and you will easily understand our delight when we find that our duck follows the key just as the duck at the fair followed the bit of bread. At another time we may note the direction assumed by the duck when left at rest; for the present we are wholly occupied with our work and we want nothing more.
[589:] The same evening we return to the fair with some bread specially prepared in our pockets, and as soon as the magician has performed his trick, my little doctor, who can hardly restrain himself, tells him that the trick is not difficult and that he himself can do it as well. He is taken at his word. He at once takes the bread with a bit of iron hidden in it from his pocket. His heart throbs as he approaches the table and holds out the bread; his hand trembles with excitement. The duck approaches and follows his hand. The child cries out and jumps for joy. With the applause, the shouts of the crowd, the child becomes giddy and is beside himself. The magician, though disappointed, embraces him, congratulates him, begs the honour of his company on the following day, and promises to collect a still greater crowd to applaud his skill. My young naturalist, full of pride, wants to stay and chatter, but I check him at once and take him home overwhelmed with praise.
[590:] The child counts the minutes till the next day with laughable impatience. He invites every one he meets; he wants the whole human race to be witness to his glory; he can scarcely wait till the appointed hour. He hurries to the place. The hall is full already. As he enters his young heart swells with pride. Other tricks are to come first. The magician surpasses himself and does the most surprising things. The child sees none of these; he wriggles, perspires, and hardly breathes; he spends his time in fingering with a trembling hand the bit of bread in his pocket. His turn comes at last; the master announces it to the audience ceremoniously. He goes up looking somewhat shamefaced and takes out his bit of bread. The vicissitudes of human things! The duck, so tame yesterday, has become wild to-day; instead of offering its beak it turns tail and swims away; it avoids the bread and the hand that holds it as carefully as it followed them yesterday. After a thousand useless tries accompanied by hoots from the audience the child complains that he is being cheated, that is not the same duck, and he defies the magician to attract it.
[591:] The magician, without further words, takes a bit of bread and offers it to the duck, which at once follows it and comes to the hand which holds it. The child takes the same bit of bread with no better success; the duck mocks his efforts and makes pirouettes around the basin. Overwhelmed with confusion the child abandons the attempt, ashamed to face the hoots any longer.
[592:] Then the magician takes the bit of bread the child brought with him and uses it as successfully as his own. He takes out the bit of iron before the audience -- another laugh at our expense -- then with this same bread he attracts the duck as before. He repeats the experiment with a piece of bread cut by a third person in full view of the audience. He does it with his glove, with his finger-tip. Finally he goes into the middle of the room and in the emphatic tones used by such persons he declares that his duck will obey his voice as readily as his hand. He speaks and the duck obeys; he bids him go to the right and he goes, to come back again and he comes. The movement is as ready as the command. The growing applause completes our discomfiture. We slip away unnoticed and shut ourselves up in our room, without relating our successes to everybody as we had expected.
[593:] Next day there is a knock at the door. When I open it there is the magician, who makes a modest complaint with regard to our conduct. What had he done that we should try to discredit his tricks and deprive him of his livelihood? What is there so wonderful in attracting a duck that we should purchase this honour at the price of an honest man's living? "My word, gentlemen! had I any other trade by which I could earn a living I would not pride myself on this. You may well believe that a man who has spent his life at this miserable trade knows more about it than you who only give your spare time to it. If I did not show you my best tricks at first, it was because one must not be so foolish as to display all one knows at once. I always take care to keep my best tricks for emergencies; and I have plenty more to prevent young folks from meddling. However, I have come, gentlemen, in all kindness, to show you the trick that gave you so much trouble; I only beg you not to use it to harm me, and to be more discreet in future."
[594:] He then shows us his apparatus, and we see with great surprise that it only consists of a strong and well armed magnet that a child, hidden under the table, was able to make move without anyone seeing him.
[595:] The man puts up his things, and after we have offered our thanks and apologies, we try to give him something. He refuses it. "No, gentlemen," says he, I owe you no gratitude and I will not accept your gift. I leave you in my debt in spite of all, and that is my only revenge. Generosity may be found among all sorts of people, and I earn my pay by doing my tricks, not by teaching them."
[596:] As he is going he addresses a reprimand to me in particular. "I can make excuses for the child," he says, "he sinned in ignorance. But you, sir, should know better. Why did you let him do it? As you are living together and you are older than he, you should look after him and give him good advice. Your experience should be his guide. When he is grown up he will reproach, not only himself, but you, for the faults of his youth."
[597:] He goes out and leaves us very embarrassed. I blame myself for my easy-going ways. I promise the child that another time I will put his interests first and warn him against faults before he falls into them, for the time is coming when our relations will be changed, when the severity of the master must give way to the friendliness of the comrade. This change must come gradually; you must look ahead, and very far ahead.
[598:] The next day we return to the fair to see the trick whose secret we have learned. We approach our Socrates, the magician, with profound respect; we scarcely dare to look him in the face. He overwhelms us with politeness and gives us the best places, which humiliates us even more. He goes through his tricks as usual, but he lingers affectionately over the duck, and often glances proudly in our direction. We are in on the secret, but we do not tell. If my pupil dared even open his mouth I'd want to squash him.
[599:] There is more meaning than you suspect in this detailed illustration. How many lessons in one! How mortifying are the results of a first impulse towards vanity! Young tutor, watch this first impulse carefully. If you can use it to bring about shame and disgrace, you may be sure a second impulse will not appear for a long time. What long preparations! you will say. I agree; and all to provide a compass which will enable us to dispense with a meridian.
[600:] Having learnt that a magnet acts through other bodies, our next business is to construct a bit of apparatus similar to that shown us. A bare table, a shallow bowl placed on it and filled with water, a duck rather better finished than the first, and so on. We often watch the thing and at last we notice that the duck, when at rest. always turns the same way. We follow up this observation; we examine the direction, we find that it is from south to north. Enough! we have found our compass or its equivalent; the study of physics is begun.
[601:] There are various regions of the earth, and these regions differ in temperature. The variation is more evident as we approach the poles. All bodies expand with heat and contract with cold; this is best measured in liquids and best of all in distilled liquids; from this we get the thermometer. The wind strikes the face, thus the air is a body, a fluid; we feel it though we have no way to see it. Invert a glass in water; the water will not fill it unless you leave a passage for the escape of the air; air is thus capable of resistance. Plunge the glass further in the water; the water will encroach on the air-space without filling it entirely; so air is capable of being compressed to a certain point. A ball filled with compressed air bounces better than one filled with anything else; so air is elastic. Raise your arm horizontally from the water when you are lying in your bath; you will feel a terrible weight on it; air is thus a heavy body. By establishing an equilibrium between air and other fluids its weight can be measured; from this the barometer, the siphon, the air-gun, and the air-pump. All the laws of statics and hydrostatics are discovered by such rough experiments. For none of these would I take the child into a physics laboratory; I dislike that array of instruments and apparatus. The scientific atmosphere kills science. Either all these instruments frighten the child, or their shapes divide and distract his attention, which should be focused on their effects.
[602:] We shall make all our machines ourselves. I would not begin by making the instrument before the experiment, but having caught a glimpse of the experiment by chance we would invent little by little an instrument that could verify it. I would prefer that our instruments not be so perfect and accurate, but that our ideas be clear as to what the apparatus ought to be and the results to be obtained by means of it. For my first lesson in statics, instead of going to find a scales, I lay a stick across the back of a chair, I measure the two parts when it is balanced; add equal or unequal weights to either end; by pulling or pushing it as is necessary, I find at last that equilibrium is the result of a reciprocal proportion between the amount of the weights and the length of the levers. Thus my little physicist is capable of rectifying a scales even before ever he sees one.
[603:] Undoubtedly one gets much clearer and surer notions of things that one learns thus by oneself than from those gotten from the instruction of others. And not only is our reason not accustomed to a slavish submission to authority, but we develop greater ingenuity in discovering relations, connecting ideas, and inventing apparatus than when we merely accept what is given us and allow our minds to be enfeebled by indifference -- like the body of a man whose servants always wait on him, dress him and put on his shoes, whose horse carries him, till he loses the use of his limbs. Boileau used to boast that he had difficulty teaching Racine the art of rhyming. Among the many admirable methods for shortening the study of the sciences, we badly need someone to teach us the art of learning them with difficulty.
[604:] The most obvious advantage of these slow and laborious inquiries is that in the midst of speculative studies one keeps an active body, supple limbs, and hands formed for work and for functions useful to man. Too many instruments invented to guide us in our experiments and to supplement the exactness of our senses makes us neglect to exercise those senses. The graphometer makes it unnecessary to estimate the size of angles. The eye which used to judge distances with much precision, trusts to the tape measure for its measurements. The portable balance dispenses with the need of judging weight by the hand as I used to do. The more ingenious are our tools, the more clumsy and awkward our organs become. By surrounding ourselves with machines we no longer find any within ourselves.
[605:] But when we put towards making these machines the skill which they replaced, when for their construction we use the wisdom which enabled us to dispense with them, we gain without losing anything. We add art to nature, and we become more ingenious without becoming less adroit. If instead of making a child stick to his books I let him occupy his time in a workshop, then his hands work for the benefit of his mind; he becomes a philosopher while seeing himself only as a workman. Moreover, this exercise has other advantages of which I shall speak later; and you will see how, from the games of philosohy, one may rise to the true functions of man.
[606:] I have said already that purely theoretical knowledge is hardly suitable for children, even for those approaching adolescence. But without going far into theoretical physics, be sure that all their experiments are connected together by some sort of deduction, so that with the help of this chain of reasoning they can put them in order in their mind and recall them when needed. For it is very difficult for isolated facts and even isolated reasons to stay long in the memory when one lacks a handle for retrieving them.
[607:] In your inquiry into the laws of nature, always begin with the commonest and most conspicuous phenomena and train your scholar not to accept these phenomena as reasons but as facts. I take a stone; I pretend to place it in the air; I open my hand; the stone falls. I see Emile attentive to what I am doing and I say to him: "Why did this stone fall?"
[608:] What child will hesitate over this question? None, not even Emile, unless I have taken great pains to teach him not to answer. All of them will say that the stone falls because it is heavy. And what is heavy? That which falls. So the stone falls because it falls? Here my little philosopher is stopped short. This is his first lesson in systematic physics, and whether he takes advantage of it or not in this way, it is a good lesson in common-sense.
[609:] As the child develops in intelligence, other important considerations require us to be still more careful in our choice of his occupations. As soon as he has sufficient self-knowledge to understand what constitutes his well-being, as soon as he can grasp such far-reaching relations as to judge what is good for him and what is not, from then on he is able to discern the difference between work and play and to consider the latter merely as a relaxation from the former. Then the objects of real usefulness may enter into his studies and compel him to give them a more constant application than he gave to his simple games. The ever-recurring law of necessity soon teaches a man to do what he does not like in order to prevent an evil which he would dislike still more. Such is the use of foresight, and from this foresight, well or ill used, arises all of human wisdom or misery.
[610:] Every man wants to be happy, but in order to become happy he must begin by knowing what happiness is. The happiness of natural man is as simple as his life: it consists in the absence of pain. Health, freedom, the necessaries of life are its elements. The happiness of moral man is something else, but that is not the question here. I cannot repeat too often that it is only physical objects that can interest children, especially children whose vanity has not been aroused and whose minds have not been corrupted beforehand by the poison of public opinion.
[611:] As soon as they foresee their needs before they feel them, their intelligence has made a great step forward; they are beginning to know the value of time. It is important therefore to accustom them to direct its use towards useful objects, but this usefulness should be easily perceptible and within the reach of their enlightenment. All that concerns the moral order and the customs of society should not yet be presented to them them, for they are not in a condition to understand it. It is wrongheaded to expect them to apply themselves to things vaguely described as good for them when they do not know what this good is. They are assured these things will be to their advantage when they are grown up, but they can take no interest in a so-called advantage that they cannot understand.
[612:] Let the child do nothing on anyone's word. Nothing is good for him but what he recognises as good. By always pushing him beyond his present enlightenment, you believe you are exercising a foresight which you really lack. To arm him with a few vain tools which he may never use, you deprive him of man's most universal tool -- common-sense. You accustom him to being always led, of never being anything but a machine in the hands of others. You wish him to be docile when he is little; that is to wish that he will be will be gullible and easily duped when he grows up. You ceaselessly tell him, "What I ask is for your good, though you cannot understand it. What does it matter to me whether you do what I'm asking or not? It is for you alone that I am making this effort." With all these fine speeches you give him now to make him wise, you are paving the way for a fortune-teller, pied-piper, quack, imposter, or some kind of crazy person to catch him in his snare or draw him into his folly.
[613:] A man must know many things which seem useless to a child, but need the child learn, or can he indeed learn, all that the man must know? Try to teach the child everything that is useful to his age and you will find that his time will be well filled. Why impose on him the studies of an age he may never reach while neglecting those studies which are right for him today? But, you ask, will there be time for him to learn what he ought to know when the time comes to use it? I do not know; but this I do know, that it is impossible to teach it sooner, for our real teachers are experience and feeling, and man will never feel what is suitable for man except in the relationships in which he finds himself. A child knows he is made to become a man; all the ideas he may have as to man's estate are for him opportunities for instruction, but of those ideas which are beyond his reach he should remain in complete ignorance. My whole book is nothing but a continual proof of this fundamental principle of education.
[614:] As soon as we have been able to give our pupil an idea of the word "useful," we have got an additional means of governing him, for this word makes a great impression on him provided that its meaning for him is a meaning relative to his own age and provided he clearly sees its relation to his present well-being. This word makes no impression on your scholars because you have taken no pains to give it a meaning they can understand. And because other people always undertake to provide what is useful to them, they never need to think about it themselves and do not know what utility is.
[615:] "What is that good for?" From now on here is the sacred word, the determining word between him and me in all the actions of our life. This is the question which from my part infallibly follows all his questions; and it serves as a brake for the multitudes of silly and tiresome interrogations with which children weary those about them -- more in order to wield some power over them than to gain any real advantage. A person whose most important lesson is to want to know only what is useful interrogates like Socrates; he never asks a question without a reason for it, for he knows he will be required to give his reason before he gets an answer.
[616:] See what a powerful instrument I have put into your hands to use with your pupil. Since he does not know the reason for anything, you can reduce him to silence almost at will; and what advantages do your knowledge and experience give you to show him the usefulness of everything that you propose! For, make no mistake about it, when you put this question to him, you are teaching him to put it to you in turn, and you must expect that whatever you suggest to him in the future he will follow your own example and ask, "What is that good for?"
[617:] Here is perhaps the most difficult trap for a tutor to avoid. If with a child's question you you merely try to get yourself out of a pinch, and if you give him a single reason he is not able to understand, seeing that you reason according to your own ideas and not his, he will think that what you tell him is good for your age but not for his own. He will no longer have confidence in you and everything will be lost. But what master will stop short and confess his faults to his pupil? All of them make it a rule never to admit to the faults they really have. I would make it a rule to admit even to faults I do not have whenever I am unable make my reasons clear to him. Thus my conduct, always clear in his mind, will never be suspicious to him and I will save more credit by assuming some faults than those do who only hide theirs.
[618:] In the first place you must realize that it is rarely up to you to propose what he ought to learn. It is for him to desire it, to seek it, and to find it -- to you to put it within reach, to skillfully give birth to this desire, and to furnish him with the means of satisfying it. From this it follows that your questions should be infrequent but well-chosen. Since he will always have more questions to put to you than you to him, you will always be less exposed and more often able to ask him, "Why is it useful to know that which you are asking me?"
[619:] Moreover, since it matters little whether he learns this or that provided he knows it well and understands the use of what he learns, as soon as you cannot give him a explanation that is good for him, give him none at all. Do not hesitate to say, "I have no good answer to give you; I was wrong, let us drop the subject." If your teaching was really ill-chosen there is no harm in dropping it altogether; if it was not, with a little care you will soon find an opportunity of making its use apparent to him.
[620:] I do not like verbal explanations. Young people pay little attention to them and hardly retain them. Things! Things! I cannot repeat it enough that we give too much power to words. With our babbling education we only create babblers.
[621:] Suppose that while I am studying with my pupil the course of the sun and the way to find our bearings, all of a sudden he interrupts me to ask what the use of all of this is. What a fine speech I might give him! How many things I might take the opportunity to teach him in reply to his question, especially if there are any witnesses to our conversation.
[Note 1] I might speak of the utility of travel, the advantages of commerce, the particular products of each climate, the customs of different peoples, the use of the calendar, the calculation of seasonal cycles for agriculture, the art of navigation, how to steer on the sea and to follow a course exactly without knowing where one is. Politics, natural history, astronomy, even morals and international law would enter into my explanation in such a way as to give my pupil a grand idea of all these sciences and a great desire to learn them. When I had finished I would have made a great display of my pedantry, but he would have not have understood a single idea. He would long to ask me as before, "What is the use of taking one's bearings?" but he would not dare for fear of making me angry. He finds it pays best to pretend to listen to what he is forced to hear. This is the way our fine education is practiced.
[622:] But Emile, who has been more simply raised and to whom we have taken pains to give a solid understanding, will hear nothing of all this. At the first word he does not understand he will run away; he will prance about the room and leave me to speechify by myself. Let us seek a more commonplace explanation; my scientific baggage is of no use to him.
[623:] We were observing the position of the forest to the north of Montmorency when he interrupted me with the usual question, "What is the use of that?" "You are right," I said. "Let us take time to think it over, and if we find that this work is not good for anything we will not take it up again, for we have plenty of useful games." We find something else to do and geography is put aside for the day.
[624:] The next morning I suggest a walk before lunch. There is nothing he would like better. Children are always ready to run, and this one has good legs. We climb up to the forest, we wander through its clearings, we get lost. We have no idea where we are, and when we want to retrace our steps we cannot find our path. Time passes. It gets hot; we get hungry and go faster; we wander vainly this way and that; we find nothing but woods, quarries, plains, with not a landmark to guide us. Very hot, very tired, very hungry, we only go further astray. We finally sit down to rest in order to deliberate. Emile, whom I assume has been raised like other children, does not deliberate, he cries. He does not know that we are at the gate of Montmorency and that a small thicket hides it from us. But a thicket is a forest to him; a man of his size is buried among bushes.
[625:] After a few moments of silence I say to him with a worried tone: my dear Emile, how are we going to get out of here?
[626:] ÉMILE, in a sweat and crying hot tears:I don't know. I'm tired, I'm hungry, I'm thirsty. I can't go any further.JEAN-JAQUES:Do you suppose I am any better off? I would cry too if I could make a lunch out of my tears. Crying is no use, we must look around us. Let's see your watch; what time is it?ÉMILE:It is noon and I haven't eaten yet!JEAN-JACQUES:That's true; it is noon and I haven't eaten yet.ÉMILE:Oh you must be very hungry!.JEAN-JACQUES:Unluckily my dinner won't come to find me. It's noon? This is exactly the time yesterday that we were observing the position of the forest from Montmorency. If only we could see the position of Montmorency from the forest --ÉMILE:But yesterday we could see the forest, and here we cannot see the town.JEAN-JACQUES:That's the problem . . . If we could only find our position without seeing it.ÉMILE:Oh! my dear friend!JEAN-JACQUES:Didn't we say the forest was --ÉMILE:North of Montmorency.JEAN-JACQUES:Then Montmorency must be----ÉMILE:South of the forest.JEAN-JACQUES:We have a way of finding the north at noon.ÉMILE:Yes, by the direction of the shadows.JEAN-JACQUES:But the south?ÉMILE:What can we do?JEAN-JACQUES:The south is opposite the north.ÉMILE:That is true; we only need to find the opposite of the shadows. Oh, there is the south! There is the south! Montmorency must be over there! Let's look for it over there!JEAN-JACQUES:You could be right; let's follow this path through the woods.ÉMILE, clapping his hands and letting out a cry of joy:Oh, I see Montmorency! There it is, right in front of us, in plain view! Let's go have lunch, let's eat, let's run fast! Astronomy is good for something.
[627:] Be sure that if he does not say this last phrase, he will think it -- it does not matter which so long as I do not say it myself. He will certainly never forget this day's lesson as long as he lives, whereas if I had made him imagine all this in his room, my speech would have been forgotten the next day. One must speak as much as one can by actions and say only those things that one cannot do.
[628:] The reader will not expect me to have such a poor opinion of him or her as to supply an example of every kind of study; but, whatever is taught, I cannot too strongly urge the tutor to adapt his practices to the capacity of his scholar. For once more I repeat the risk is not in what he does not know, but in what he thinks he knows.
[629:] I remember how I once tried to give a child a taste for chemistry. After showing him several metallic precipitates, I explained how ink was made. I told him how its blackness was merely the result of fine particles of iron separated from the vitriol and precipitated by an alkaline solution. In the midst of my learned explanation the little traitor stopped me abruptly with the question I myself had taught him. I was very embarrassed.
[630:] After thought for a while I decided what to do. I sent for some wine from the cellar of the master of the house, and some very cheap wine from a wine-merchant. I took a small flask of an alkaline solution, and placing two glasses before me filled with the two sorts of wine
[Note 2] , I spoke to thim thus.
[631:] People falsify many products in order to make them appear better than they are. These falsifications fool the eye and the taste, but they are harmful and make the falsified thing worse with its fine appearance than it was before.
[632:] All sorts of drinks are falsified, especially wine; for the deception is more difficult to detect and makes more profit for the deceiver.
[633:] Sour wine is falsified with litharge; litharge is a preparation of lead. Lead in combination with acids forms a sweet salt which corrects the harsh taste of the sour wine, but it is poisonous to those who drink it. So before we drink wine of doubtful quality we should be able to tell if there is lead in it. This is how one can do that.
[634:] Wine contains not merely an inflammable spirit as you have seen from the brandy made from it; it also contains an acid, as you know from the vinegar made from it.
[635:] This acid has an affinity for metals. It combines with them and forms salts, such as iron-rust, which is only iron dissolved by the acid in air or water, or such as verdegris, which is only copper dissolved in vinegar.
[636:] But this same acid has a still greater affinity for alkalis than for metals, so that when we add alkalis to the above-mentioned salts, the acid sets free the metal with which it had combined and combines with the alkali.
[637:] Then the metal, set free by the acid which held it in solution, is precipitated and the liquid becomes opaque.
[638:] If then there is litharge in either of these glasses of wine. the acid holds the litharge in solution. When I pour into it an alkaline solution, the acid will be forced to set the lead free in order to combine with the alkali. The lead, no longer held in solution, will reappear, the liquor will become thick, and after a time the lead will be deposited at the bottom of the glass.
[639:] If there is no lead
[Note 3] nor other metal in the wine the alkali will slowly
[Note 4] combine with the acid, all will remain clear and there win be no precipitate.
[640:] Then I poured my alkaline solution first into one glass and then into the other. The wine from our own house remained clear and unclouded, the other at once became turbid, and an hour later the lead might be plainly seen, precipitated at the bottom of the glass.
[641:] "This," said I, "is a pure natural wine and fit to drink; the other is falsified and poisonous. This is discovered through the same kind of science as the one whose usefulness you asked me about. Someone who knows how to make ink can also know what wines are adulterated."
[642:] I was very well pleased with my illustration, but I found it made little impression on my pupil. When I had time to think about it I saw I had been a fool, for not only was it impossible for a child of twelve to follow my explanations, but the usefulness of the experiment did not appeal to him. He had tasted both glasses of wine and found them both good, so he attached no meaning to the word "falsified" which I thought I had explained so nicely. The other words, "unhealthy" and "poison," similarly had no meaning for him; he was in the same condition as the boy who told the story of Philip and his doctor. It is the case with all children.
[643:] The relation of effects to causes whose connection is unknown to us, the good things and bad things about which we have no idea, the needs we have never felt, are nothing for us. It is impossible to interest us in them sufficiently to make us do anything connected with them. At fifteen we can conceive of the happiness of a wise man no better than we can at thirty conceive of the glory of paradise. If we can not conceive of either we will do little to attain them, and even if we could conceive of them, we would still do little unless we desired them and unless we felt they were right for us. It is easy to convince a child that what you wish to teach him is useful, but it is useless to convince him if you cannot also persuade him. In vain may pure reason make us approve or blame; it is only passion that makes us act, and how can one become passionate about interests that one doesn't yet have?
[644:] Never show a child what he cannot see. Since mankind is almost unknown to him, and since you cannot make a man of him, bring the man down to the level of the child. While you are thinking of what will be useful to him at another age, speak to him only of things whose usefulness he can see in the present. Moreover, as soon as he begins to reason let there be no comparison with other children, no rivalry, no competition, not even in running races. I would far rather he did not learn anything than that he learn it through jealousy or self-conceit. However, each year I will mark the progress he has made; I will compare the results with those of the following year. I will say to him: You have grown so many inches; there is the ditch you jumped, the weight you carried, the distance you flung a pebble, the race you ran without stopping to take breath, etc.. Let us see what you can do now. Thus I stimulate him without making him jealous of anyone. He wants to surpass himself; he ought to. I see no reason why he should not emulate himself.
[645:] I hate books. They only teach us to talk about things that we do not know. It is said that Hermes engraved the elements of science on pillars lest a deluge should destroy them. Had he imprinted them in men' s heads they would have been preserved by tradition. Well-prepared minds are the monuments on which human knowledge is most deeply engraved. Is there no way of correlating so many lessons scattered through so many books, no way of focusing them on some common object, easy to see, interesting to follow, and stimulating even at this age? If one could invent a situation in which all the natural needs of man were were shown in a way that was perceptible to the mind of a child, and where the means of providing for these needs developed successively and with the same facility, it would be the stirring and simple portrayal of this state that should form the earliest training of the child's imagination.
[646:] Eager philosopher, I see your own imagination light up. Spare yourself the trouble; this state is already known, it is described, with due respect to you, far better than you could describe it, at least with greater truth and simplicity. Since we must have books, there is one book which, to my thinking, supplies the best treatise of natural education. This is the first book Emile will read; for a long time it will form his whole library, and it will always retain an honoured place. It will be the text to which all our talks about natural science are but the commentary. As we progress it will serve as a test of the state of our judgment, and as long as our taste is not spoiled, to read it will always be a pleasure for us. What is this wonderful book? Is it Aristotle? Pliny? Buffon? No; it is Robinson Crusoe.
[647:] Robinson Crusoe on his island, alone, deprived of the help of his fellow-men and of the tools of every art, yet providing for his own subsistance, his own preservation, and even procuring for himself a kind of well-being -- here is an object interesting for every age and that one can find a thousand ways to make pleasing to children. Here is how we can make a reality of that desert island which formerly served as an illustration. This state, I admit, is not that of social man; probably it is not that of Emile; but it is on the basis of this same state that he should judge all the others. The surest way to raise oneself above prejudice and to base his judgments on the true relations of things is to put oneself in the place of a solitary man and to judge all things as they would be judged by such a man in relation to their own utility.
[648:] Stripped of all of its irrelevancies, this novel -- beginning with Robinson's shipwreck on his island and ending with the coming of the ship which takes him away -- will form both Emile's amusement and his instruction during the whole period we are considering. I want his head be full of it, and for him to be ceaselessly busy with his castle, his goats, his plantations. Let him figure out in detail, not from books but from things, all that is necessary in such a case. Let him think he is Robinson himself; let him see himself dressed in skins, wearing a tall cap, a great sword, all the grotesque get-up of Robinson Crusoe, even to the umbrella which he will scarcely need. I want him to anxiously consider what measures to take if this or that happens to be missing, to examine his hero's conduct, to search for things he might have omitted or that he might have done better. He should carefully note his mistakes so as not to fall into them in similar circumstances, for you may be sure he will plan out a similar establishment for himself. This is the genuine castle in the air of this happy age, when the child knows no other happiness but necessity and liberty.
[649:] What a resource will this infatuation supply in the hands of a skilful teacher who has aroused it for the purpose of using it. The child who wants to build a storehouse on his desert island will be more eager to learn than the master to teach. He will want to know everything that is useful and will want to know only that. You will not need to guide him; you will only need to hold him back. Nevertheless, hurry to establish him on his island while his happiness is limited to it. For the day is approaching when, if he still wants to live there, he will not want to live alone, and when even the companionship of Friday, who now hardly makes an impression on him, will not long suffice.
[650:] The practice of the natural arts which can suffice a man alone leads to research in the industrial arts which call for the cooperation of many hands. The former may be carried on by solitary people, by savages; but the latter can only arise in society and make it necessary. As long as only physical needs are recognised, each man is sufficient to himself; the introduction of superfluity makes indispensible the division and distribution of labor. For even though one man working alone only earns the subsistence of one man, a hundred men working together can earn enough subsistence for two hundred. As soon therefore as some men are idle, it is necessary that the coordination of those who do work supply the work of those who do nothing.
[651:] Your greatest care should be to keep out of your scholar's mind all notions of social relations that are not within his reach. But when the chain of knowledge forces you to show him the mutual dependence of mankind, instead of showing him its moral side, turn all his attention at first towards industry and the mechanical arts which make them useful to each other. While you take him from one workshop to another, do not let him see any work without trying it himself, and do not let him leave it without knowing perfectly the reason for everything that is done there or at least for everything that he has observed. With this aim you should do some work yourself and show him everything by example. To make him a master, be yourself an apprentice, and expect that one hour of work will teach him more things than he would retain in a whole day of explanations.
[652:] There is a public estime attached to the various arts which is in inverse ratio to their real utility. This estime is even measured directly according to their disutility, and that ought to be. The most useful arts are those which earn the least, for the number of workmen is proportional to men's need, and the work which everybody needs must remain at a price that the poor can pay. On the other hand, those influential people -- not those called artisans but artists -- who work only for the rich and idle, put an arbitrary price on their baubles; and since the worth of this vain labour is only based on opinion, the price itself becomes part of that worth and they are estimed in proportion to their cost. The rich think so much of these things not because they are useful but because they are beyond the reach of the poor. Nolo habere bona, nisi quibus populus inviderit.
[Note 5]
[653:] What will become of your pupils if you let them acquire this insane prejudice, if you share it yourself, if, for instance, they see you enter into a jeweler's shop with more respect than you show in a locksmith's? What judgement will they form of the true worth of the arts and the true value of things when they see everywhere the price of fantasy in contradiction with the price based on real utility, and that the more a thing costs the less it is worth? The first moment you let these ideas enter their heads you may abandon the rest of their education. In spite of you they will be raised like everyone else -- you will have wasted fourteen years of effort.
[654:] Focused on furnishing his island, Emile will have other ways of seeing. Robinson would have given more importance to a toolmaker's shop than all of Saide's finery put together. He would have reckoned the toolmaker a very worthy man, and Saide little more than a charlatan.
[655:] "My son is made to live in the world: he will not live with wise men but with fools. He must therefore know their follies, since it is by them that they want to be led. A real knowledge of things may be good, but the knowledge of men and their opinions is better, for in human society man's greatest tool is man himself, and the wisest man is he who uses this tool best. What is the good of giving children the idea of an imaginary order completely contrary to the one that they will find established and on the basis of which they will have to govern themselves? Give them first lessons on how to be wise, and then you will give them a way to judge how others are fools."
[656:] These are the specious maxims by which fathers in their false wisdom strive to make their children the slaves of the prejudices they feed them and themselves the puppets of a senseless crowd they hope to make subservient to their passions. In order to achieve a knowledge of man, we must know so many things before we know him! Man is the final subject studied by a sage, and you expect to make him the first subject studied by a child! Before teaching the child our sentiments, begin by teaching him to appreciate them. Do you perceive folly when you mistake it for wisdom? To be wise we must discern what is not wise. How can your child know men when he can neither judge of their judgments nor unravel their errors? It is wrong to know what they think when one ingnores whether what they think is true or false. First, therefore, teach him what things are in themselves. Afterwards you can teach him what they are in our eyes. It is thus that he will learn to compare opinion and truth and rise above the vulgar crowd. For no one recognizes prejudices when one has adopted them, and no one can lead a people when he ressembles it. But if you begin by teaching public opinion before he learns how to judge of its worth, you can be sure that whatever you may do it will become his own and that you will never destroy it. I conclude that to make a young man judicioius one must form his judgement instead of dictating yours to him.
[657:] You see that until now I have not spoken to my pupil about men. He would have too much sense to listen to me. His relations to his species are as yet not sufficiently apparent to him to enable him to judge others by himself. He knows no human being but himself, and he is far from really knowing even himself. But if he forms few judgements about himself, at least those he has are accurate. He knows nothing of another's place, but he knows his own and keeps to it. Instead of social laws that he cannot know we have used the chains of necessity to hold him. He is still hardly more than a physical being; let us continue to treat him that way.
[658:] It is by their perceptible relation to his utility, his safety, his conservation, his well-being that he must judge all the bodies of nature and all the works of men. Thus iron ought to have in his eyes a much greater price than gold, and glass than a diamond. In the same way, he will honor a shoemaker or a mason more than he does a Lempereur, a Le Blanc, or all the jewelers in Europe. In his eyes a confectioner is a really great man, and he would give the whole academy of sciences for the smallest pastrycook in the rue des Lombards. Goldsmiths, engravers, gilders, and embroiderers are in his view lazy people who play at utterly useless games. He does not even think much of a clockmaker. The happy child enjoys time without being its slave; he takes advantage of it but does not know its price. The calm of the passions which makes the passage of time equal to him makes any means of measuring time unnecessary. When I assumed that Emile had a watch,
[Note 6] just as I assumed that he cried, it was a common Emile that I chose in order to serve my purpose and make myself understood. As for the real Emile, a child so different from others would not serve as an example for anything.
[659:] There is a no less natural and even more judicious order by which the arts are valued according to relations of necessity which tie them together. This order would place in the highest rank the most independent arts and in the lowest those which depend the most on others. This order, which furnishes important considerations on the order of society in general, is similar to the preceding one and is subject to the same inversions in the estime of men. Accordingly, the use of raw materials is the work of the least honorable trades, those practically without profit, whereas the more these same materials change hands, the more the manufactured good rises in price and in honor. I do not ask whether it is true that one's skill is really greater and merits more reward in the meticulous arts which give the final form to these materials than in the earliest labor which converted them to man's use. But I do say that in each case the art which is most generally useful and indispensible is incontestably that which merits most esteem; and that the art which requires the least help from others is more worthy of honour than those which are dependent on other arts, since it is freer and more nearly independent. These are the true laws of appreciation of the arts and of industry; all the rest is arbitrary and depends only on opinion.
[660:] The first and most respectable of all the arts is agriculture. I would put metal work in the second rank, carpentry in the third, and so on. The child who has not been seduced by vulgar prejudices will judge them precisely in this way. How many important reflections will our Emile draw from his Robinson on this subject! What will he think when he sees the arts only brought to perfection by sub-division, by the infinite multiplication of tools. He will say, "All those people are stupidly ingenious. You would think they were afraid that their arms and their fingers had no use, they invent so many tools instead. To practice only one art they become the slaves of a thousand others; every single workman needs a whole town. As for my companion and me, we put our genius in our own skill; we only make tools we can take about with us. All these people who are so proud of their talents in Paris could not do anything at all on our island; they would have become our apprentices."
[661:] Reader, do not stop to watch the bodily exercises and manual skill of our pupil, but consider the direction we are giving to his childish curiosity; consider his common-sense, his inventive spirit, his foresight; consider what a head he will have on his shoulders. In all that he sees and all that he does he will want to know everything, he will want to know the reason for everything. From tool to tool he will go back to the first beginning, he will admit nothing on supposition. He will refuse to learn anything requiring a previous knowledge that he himself has not acquired. If he sees a spring made he will want to know how they got the steel from the mine; if he sees the pieces of a chest put together, he will want to know how the tree was cut down. If he works himself with each tool that he uses he will not fail to say, "If I didn't have this tool, how could I make one like it, or how could I get along without it?"
[662:] It is, however, difficult to avoid another error. When the teacher is very fond of certain occupations, he is apt to assume that the child shares his tastes. Beware whenever you begin to get carried away by the fun of working that the child isn't becoming bored but does not dare to admit it. The child should be into what he is doing, but you should be completely into him -- observing him, watching him constantly, and without his knowing it anticipating all his feelings beforehand and preventing those that he should not have.. In short, keep him occupied in such a way that he not only feels useful but takes a pleasure in understanding the purpose which his work will serve.
[663:] The social dimension of the arts consists in the exchanges of industry, that of commerce in the exchange of things, that of banks in the exchange of symbols and of money. All these ideas hang together, and their elementary notions have already been grasped: we laid the foundations for all of that in early childhood with the help of Robert the gardener. It remains for us now to generalize these same ideas and to extend them to more examples in order to make the child understand the workings of trade -- both taken on its own terms and made concrete to him by means of particular instances of natural history with regard to the special products of each country, by particular instances of the arts and sciences which concern navigation and the difficulties of transport, greater or less in proportion to the distance between places, the position of land, seas, rivers, etc.
[664:] No society can exist without exchange, no exchange can exist without a common standard of measurement, and no common standard of measurement can exist without equality. Hence the first law of every society is some conventional equality either in men or in things.
[665:] Conventional equality between men, a very different thing from natural equality, makes necessary positive law, that is, government and laws. The political knowledge of a child should be clear and limited; he should know nothing of government in general beyond what concerns the rights of property, of which he has already some idea.
[666:] Conventional equality between things has led to the invention of money, for money is only a term of comparison for the value of different sorts of things; and in this sense money is the real bond of society. But anything may be money: in former days it was cattle. shells are still used among many peoples, iron was money in Sparta, leather in Sweden, while gold and silver are used among us.
[667:] Metals, being easier to carry, have generally been chosen as the means of every exchange, and these metals have been made into coin to save the trouble of continual weighing and measuring. For the stamp on the coin is merely evidence that the coin thus marked is of a certain weight; and only the ruler has the right to coin money given that he alone has the right to require that his testiony have authority for the whole nation.
[668:] Explained thus, the use of this invention can be understood by even the stupidest person. It is difficult to make a direct comparison between various things -- for instance, between cloth and corn. But when we find a common measure in money, it is easy for the manufacturer and the farmer to relate the value of the goods they wish to exchange to this common measure. If a given quantity of cloth is worth a given sum of money, and if a given quantity of corn is worth the same sum of money, then it follows that the seller, receiving the corn in exchange for his cloth, makes an equitable exchange. Thus by means of money it becomes possible to compare the values of goods of various kinds.
[669:] Do not go further than that and and do not enter into an explication of the moral effects of this institution. In everything it is important state clearly the use before showing the the abuse. If you attempt to teach children how the sign has led to the neglect of the actual thing, how money has given rise to all the illusions of public opinion, how countries rich in silver must be poor in everything else, you will be treating these children not only as philosophers but as wise men, and you will be attempting to make them understand something even few philosophers have been able to conceptualize.
[670:] What a wealth of interesting objects the curiosity of our pupil may be turned towards without ever leaving the real and material relations that are within his reach, and without arousing in his mind a single idea that he cannot conceive! The teacher's art consists in never burdening his pupil's observations with minutia that hold no significance but in ceaselessy leading him towards relations of importance which he will one day need to know in order to rightly judge between good and evil in civil society. The teacher must be able to adapt the conversation with which he amuses his pupil to the turn already given to his mind. A problem which another child would hardly touch upon will torment Emile half a year.
[671:] We go to dine in an opulent home. There we find preparations for a feast -- many people, many servants, many dishes, and elegant fine china. All this apparatus of pleasure and feasting has something intoxicating about it that goes to the head when one is not accustomed to it. I foresee the effect of all this on my young pupil. While the meal goes on, while different courses come one after another, while a thousand noisy conversations are heard around the table, I lean towards him and whisper in his ear: "Through how many hands would you estimate that all of the things you see on this table have passed before coming here?" What a crowd of ideas I awaken in his brain by these few words! Immediately all the vapors of his delirium vanish. He thinks, he reflects, he calculates, he worries. While the philosophers, excited by wine or perhaps by the women next to them, are babbling like children, here he is philosophizing all alone in his corner. He asks questions; I decline to answer and put him off to another time. He becomes impatient, he forgets to eat and drink, he burns to get away from table and converse with me at his ease. What an object for his curiosity, what a text for instruction. With a healthy judgment that nothing has corrupted, what will he think of luxury when he finds that all the regions of the world have contributed, that twenty million hands perhaps have worked for a long time, that it has cost the lives, perhaps, of thousands of men, and all that to present him with pomp at noon that which he'll deposit in his chamber pot at night?
[672:] Watch with care what secret conclusions he draws in his heart from all his observations. If you have watched him less carefully than I suppose, his thoughts may be tempted in another direction; he may consider himself a person of great importance in the world when he sees so much labor concentrated on the preparation of his dinner. If you suspect this kind of reasoning, you can easily prevent it, or at any rate promptly erase the false impression. As of now he can only appropriate things by personal enjoyment, he can only judge of their fitness or unfitness for him by his sense perceptions of them. The comparison of a rustic meal, prepared by exercise, seasoned by hunger, liberty, and joy, with this magnificent but tedious repast will suffice to make him feel that he has gotten no real advantage from the splendour of the feast, and that his stomach being as well satisfied when he left the table of the peasant as when he left the table of the financier, he has gained nothing more from the one than from the other that he could truly call his own.
[673:] Imagine what a tutor might say to him on such an occasion. Consider the two dinners and decide for yourself which gave you most pleasure, which seemed the most joyful, at which did people eat with the greatest appetite, drink the most gaily, laugh the most heartily. Which was the least tedious and required least change of courses? Yet note the difference---this black bread you so enjoy is made from the peasant's own harvest; his wine is dark in colour and of a common kind, but wholesome and refreshing; it was made in his own vineyard. The cloth is made of his own hemp, spun and woven in the winter by his wife and daughters and the maid; no hands but theirs have touched the food. The closest mill and the neighboring market are the limits of the universe for them. In what way did you really enjoy all that the produce of faraway lands and the service of so many hands at the other table? If you did not get a better meal, what have you gained from this abundance? How much of it was made for you? If you had been the master of the house, the tutor might say, all of that would have been still foreign to you, for the anxiety of displaying your enjoyment before the eyes of others would have robbed you of it. The pains would be yours, the pleasure theirs.
[674:] This speech might be very fine, but it would worth nothing to Emile, for whom it would be beyond reach and whose ideas do not come by dictation. Speak to him more simply. After these two experiences, say to him some morning, "Where shall we have dinner today? Around that mountain of silver that covered three quarters of the table and those rows of paper flowers on mirrors that came with the dessert? Among those ladies with large headdresses who treat you like a little doll and want you to talk about what you do not know? Or in that village two miles from here, with those good people who welcome us so joyously and give us such good fresh cream?" Emile's choice will not be difficult, for he is neither a chatterbox nor a show off; he cannot stand constraint and all our fine dishes do not tempt him. But he is always ready for a run in the country and is very fond of good fruit and vegetables, sweet cream and kindly people.
[Note 7] On our way, the thought will occur to him, "All those people who laboured to prepare that grand feast were either wasting their time or they have no idea how to enjoy our pleasures."
[675:] My examples, good perhaps for one child, would be bad for a thousand others. If you understand its spirit you will be able to vary the examples as needed, depending on your study of the genius of each child, and this in turn depends on the occasions which happen to demonstrate it. You should not assume that in the three or four years we have to work with we could give even the most gifted child an idea of all the arts and sciences sufficient to enable him to study them for himself when he is older. But by bringing before him what he needs to know, we put him in a position to develop his own tastes, his own talents, to take the first step towards the object which touches his genius, and to show us the the path we must clear in order to promote nature.
[676:] Another advantage of this chain of limited but exact bits of knowledge is to show by their connection and interdependence how to rank them in one's own estimation and to be on one's guard against those prejudices, common to most men, which draw them towards the talents they themselves cultivate and away from those they have neglected. He who sees clearly the order of the whole sees the place where each piece ought to fit. He who sees one part well and who knows it deeply can be a a learned man, but the former is a wise man; and you remember it is wisdom rather than knowledge that we hope to acquire.
[677:] However that may be, my method does not depend on my examples. It depends on the amount of a man's powers at different ages and the choice of occupations adapted to those powers. I think it would be easy to find a method which appeared to give better results, but if it were less suited to the type, sex, and age of the scholar, I doubt whether the results would really be as good.
[678:] At the beginning of this second period we took advantage of the fact that our strength was more than enough for our needs in order to take us outside ourselves. We have ranged the heavens and measured the earth; we have sought out the laws of nature; we have explored the whole of our island. Now let us return to ourselves; let us unconsciously approach our own dwelling. We are happy indeed if we do not find it already occupied by the dreaded enemy who is preparing to seize it.
[679:] What remains to be done when we have observed all that lies around us? We must turn to our own use all that we can get; we must increase our comfort by means of our curiosity. Up until now we have provided ourselves with tools of all kinds, not knowing which we require. Perhaps those we do not want will be useful to others, and perhaps we may need theirs. Thus we discover the use of exchange; but for this we must know each other's needs, what tools other people use, what they can offer in exchange. Suppose we have ten men, each of whom has ten different requirements. To get what he needs for himself each must work at ten different kinds of work. But given the differences in genius and in talent, one will succeed at one kind of work, another at another. Each of them, suited for diverse jobs, will work at all of them and will be badly served. Let us form these ten men into a society, and let each apply himself to the to the kind of occupation that suits him best, and let him work at it for himself and for the rest. Each will profit from the talents of the others' talents just as if they were his own; each will perfect his own talent by by continual exercise; and thus all ten, perfectly well provided for, will still have a surplus for others. This is the plain foundation of all our institutions. It is not my aim to examine its consequences here; that is what I have done in another book.
[680:] According to this principle, any one who wanted to see himself as an isolated being, dependent on no one and self-sufficient, could only be miserable. He could not even continue to exist, for finding the whole earth covered with mine and thine while he had only himself, how could he get the means of subsistence? When we leave the state of nature we compel others to do the same: no one can remain in a state of nature in spite of his fellow-creatures. And to try to remain in it when it is no longer practicable would really be to leave it, for self-preservation is nature's first law.
[681:] Thus the idea of social relations is gradually developed in the child's mind, even before he can really be an active member of human society. Emile sees that in order to have tools for his own use other people must have theirs, and that he can get in exchange what he needs and they possess. I easily bring him to feel the need of such exchange and to take advantage of it.
[682:] "Sir, I must live," said a miserable writer of satires to the minister who reproved him for his infamous trade. "I do not see the necessity for that," replied the great man coldly. This answer, excellent from the minister, would have been barbarous and untrue in any other mouth. Every man must live. This argument, which appeals to every one with more or less force in proportion to his humanitarian tendencies, strikes me as unanswerable when applied to oneself. Since the strongest aversion that nature has implanted in us is our dislike of death, it follows that everything is permissible to the man who has no other means of living. The principles by which a good man is taught to scorn his life and to sacrifice it to duty are far removed from this primitive simplicity. Happy are those nations where one can be good without effort, and just without virtue! If in this world there is any state so miserable that one cannot live there without doing wrong, where the citizen is evil by necessity, it is not the criminal whom you should hang but he who forced him to become one.
[683:] As soon as Emile knows what life is, my first care will be to teach him to preserve it. Until now I have made no distinction of condition, rank, status, or fortune; nor shall I distinguish between them in what follows, because man is the same in every status. The rich man's stomach is no bigger than the poor man's, nor is his digestion any better. The master's arm is neither longer nor stronger than the slave's; a nobleman is no taller than a man of the people; and finally, since natural needs are the same to all, the means for satisfying them should be everywhere equal. Adapt the education of man to man, and not to that which is not him. Do you not see that in working to form him exclusively for one condition you are making him useless for anything else, and that if his fortune happens to change you will have worked only to make him unhappy? What could be more absurd than a great lord in rags who carries with him into his misery all the prejudices of his birth? What is more despicable than a rich man fallen into poverty, who, remembering the scorn with which he himself regarded the poor, feels that he has become the lowest of men? One of them has, as a last resort, the job of becoming a public nuisance, the other a cringing servant, with this fine saying, "I must live."
[684:] You count on the present order of society without considering that this order is itself subject to inevitable revolutions and that that it is impossible to foresee or prevent the one which may affect your children. The great become small, the rich become poor, the king becomes a commoner. Are the blows of fate so rare that you can count on being exempt from them? We are approaching the state of crisis and the century of revolutions.
[Note 8] Who can answer to what you may then become? Everything that man has made, man can destroy. Nature's characters alone are ineradicable, and nature makes neither princes, nor rich men, nor noblemen. This satrap whom you have educated for greatness, what will become of him when he is brought down? This financier who can only live on gold, what will he do in poverty? This haughty fool who cannot use his own hands, who prides himself on what is not really his -- what will he do when it is all taken away? Happy is the man who can leave the estate that leavs him and remain a man despite his fate! Let men praise as they will that conquered monarch who wanted in his fury to be buried beneath the fragments of his throne. As for me, I look at him with scorn. To me he only exists with his crown, and when that is gone he is no longer king. But he who loses his crown and lives without it is therefore above it. From the rank of a king, which may be held by a coward, a villain, or a madman, he rises to the rank of a man, a position few can fill. Thus he triumphs over Fortune, he braves it. He owes nothing except to himself alone, and when he has nothing left to show but himself he is not nothing, he is something. Yes, I prefer a hundred times the King of Corinth who was a schoolmaster at Syracuse and the King of Macedonia who was a court recorder at Rome to the wretched Tarquin who does not know what to do if he is not ruling, or the heir and son of a king of kings -- the plaything of anyone who dared insult his poverty -- wandering from court to court in search of help and finding nothing but reproach for lack of knowing any trade but one that is no longer in his power.
[685:] Man and citizen, whatever he may be, has nothing to invest in society but himself. All his other goods belong to society in spite of him, and when a man is rich, either he does not enjoy his wealth, or the public enjoys it too. In the first case he robs others as well as himself; in the second he gives them nothing. Thus his debt to society is still unpaid as long as he only pays with his goods. "But my father was serving society while he was acquiring his wealth." That may be. So he paid his own debt, not yours. You owe more to others than if you had been born with nothing, since you were born privileged. It is not fair that what one man has done for society should discharge another from what he owes it, for since every man owes all that he is, he can only pay his own debt; and no father can transmit to his son any right to be useless to his fellows. Now, according to you this is what he has done by transmitting his riches, which are the proof and the price of his work. The man who eats in idleness what he has not himself earned steals it; and the stockholder whom the state pays differs little from a robber who lives at the expense of the passers-by. Outside of society, the isolated man owes nothing to anyone; he has a right to live as he pleases. But in society, where he necessarily lives at the expense of others, he owes them in work the price of his maintenance; this is without exception. To work is therefore an indispensable duty for social man. Rich or poor, powerful or feeble, any idle citizen is a thief.
[686:] Now of all the occupations which can fournish subsistence to man, the nearest to a state of nature is manual labor; of all conditions the most independent of fortune and of men is that of the artisan. The artisan depends on his work alone. He is as free as the laborer is inslaved, for the latter depends on his field whose harvest is at the discretion of others. An enemy, a prince, a powerful neighbour, or a law-suit may take away this field; through this field he may be harassed in all sorts of ways. But if the artisan is ill-treated his goods are quickly packed: he folds up his arms and leaves. Nevertheless, agriculture is still the first occupation of man; it is the most honest, most useful, and consequently the most noble one he can practice. I do not say to Emile, "Learn agriculture"; he already knows it. All rural work is familiar to him. It was his first occupation, and he returns to it continually. So I say to him, "Cultivate your father's lands, but if you lose this inheritance, or if you have none to lose, what will you do? So learn a trade."
[687:] A trade for my son! My son a working man! Sir, what are you thinking of? Madame, my thoughts are wiser than yours; you want to make him fit for nothing but a lord, a marquis, or a prince; and some day he may be less than nothing. I want to give him a rank that he cannot lose, a rank that will always do him honor; and, whatever you may say, he will have fewer equals with this one title than with all those you want to give him.
[688:] The letter kills, the spirit gives life. To know a trade it is less a question of learning it than of overcoming the prejudices that scorn it. You will never be reduced to earning your livelihood; Ah, too bad, too bad for you! No matter; do not work for necessity but for glory. Lower yourself to the condition of an artisan in order to rise above your own. In order to conquer fortune and things, begin by making yourself independent of them. To rule through public opinion, begin by ruling over it.
[689:] Remember I demand no talent, only a trade, a genuine trade, a purely mechanical art in which the hands work harder than the head, a trade which does not lead to fortune but makes one able to get along without it. In households well beyond the danger of lacking bread I have known fathers carry foresight to such a point as to provide their children not only with ordinary teaching but with knowledge from which they could get a living if anything happened. These farsighted parents thought they were doing a great thing. They did nothing, for the resources they imagine they have secured depend on that very fortune of which they would make their children independent; so that unless they found themselves in circumstances fitted for the display of their talents, they would die of hunger as if they had none.
[690:] As soon as it is a question of influence and intrigue you may just as well use these means to keep yourself affluent as to acquire, in the depths of poverty, the means of returning to your former position. If you cultivate the arts which depend on the artist's reputation, if you fit yourself for jobs which are only obtained by favor, how will that help you when, rightly disgusted with the world, you scorn the steps by which you must climb? You have studied politics and the self-interest of rulers -- that is fine. But how will you use this knowledge if you cannot get through to the ministers, the women at court, or the bureau chiefs? if you do not have the secret of pleasing them, if they fail to find in you the kind of fool that suits them? You are an architect or a painter; well and good. But your talents must be made known. Do you suppose you can all of a sudden start exhibiting your work in the Salon? Unfortunately that is not the way it works! You have to go to the Academy; even there you need a sponsor in order to obtain a quiet place in the corner of a wall. Instead, leave your ruler and pencil with me, take a cab and drive from door to door; that is how one gains celebrity. Now, you must know that the doors of the great are guarded by swiss guards or porters who only understand one language, and their ears are in their palms. Would you like to teach what you have learned and become an instructor of geography, mathematics, languages, music, drawing? Even for that one must find pupils and consequently find friends who will sing your praises. Understand that it will be more important to be pretentious than skillful, and with no trade but your own you will always be considered ignorant.
[691:] See, therefore, how little you can depend on these fine resources, and how many other resources are necessary before you can use what you have got. And what will become of you from such base humiliation? Reverses will make you worse rather than better. More than ever the plaything of public opinion, how will you rise above the arbitrary prejudices on which your fate depends? How can you despise the vices and the lowness which you need to earn your living? You used to be dependent only on wealth; now you are dependent on the wealthy. You have only worsened your slavery and added to your misery. Now you are poor without being free. It is the worst state man can fall into.
[692:] But if, instead of rushing into into the higher forms of learning that can only feed the mind and not the body, you have recourse, whenever needed, to your hands and what your hands can do for you, all these difficulties disappear, all these strategems become useless. Your trade is ready when required. Uprightness and honor are no longer an obstacle to life. You have no need to become base and deceptive before the great, submissive and cringing before fools, a despicable flatterer of both, a borrower or a thief -- for there is little difference between them when one has nothing. Other people's opinions are no concern of yours; you need not pay court to any one; there is no imbecile to flatter, no flunkey to bribe, no woman to pay, or worse , to flatter. Let rogues conduct the affairs of state. In your lowly rank you can still be an honest man and yet get a living. You walk into the first workshop of your trade. "Master, I want work." "Friend, put yourself over there and get started." Before dinner-time you have earned your dinner. If you are diligent and sober, before the week is out you will have earned your keep for another week. You will have lived in freedom, health, truth, industry, and righteousness. Time is not wasted when it brings these returns.
[693:] I want absolutely that Emile learn a trade. "An honest trade, at least," you say. What do you mean by honest ? Is not every useful trade honest ? I would not want him to be an embroiderer, a gilder, or a varnisher like Locke's young gentleman. Neither would I make him a musician, an actor, or an author.
[Note 9] With the exception of these and others like them, let him choose his own trade; I do not mean to thwart him in anything. I would rather have him be a shoemaker than a poet; I would rather he paved streets than make porcelaine flowers. But, you will say, policemen, spies, and hangmen are useful people. I say that it all depends on the government. But let that pass. I was wrong; it is not enough to choose an honest trade, it must be a trade which does not develop detestable qualities in the mind, qualities incompatible with humanity. To return to our original expression, let us choose an honest trade, but let us remember there can be no honesty without usefulness.
[694:] A famous writer of this century whose books are full of great schemes and narrow views was under a vow, like the other priests of his communion, not to take a wife. Finding himself more scrupulous than others with regard to his neighbour's wife, they say that he decided to employ pretty servants instead, and so did his best to repair the wrong done to the race by his rash promise. He thought it the duty of a citizen to breed children for the state, and so he made his children into artisans. As soon as they were old enough they were taught whatever trade they chose. Only idle or useless trades were excluded, such as that of the wigmaker -- who is never necessary and may any day now cease to be required since nature does not seem to get tired of providing us with hair.
[695:] This is the spirit that shall guide our choice of trade for Emile, or rather, not our choice but his. For the maxims he has imbibed make him despise useless things, and he will never be content to waste his time on labors that have no value; and he only knows the value of things from their real utility. He must have a trade that would be of use to Robinson on his island.
[696:] When we review with the child the productions of nature and of art, when we stimulate his curiosity and follow its lead, we have great opportunities of studying his tastes, his inclinations, his tendencies, and perceiving the first spark of genius, if he has one that is clearly marked. You must, however, be on your guard against the common error which mistakes the effects of circumstances for the ardour of genius, or imagines there is a decided inclination towards any one of the arts when there is nothing more than a spirit of emulation, common to men and monkeys, which impels them mechanically to do what they see others doing without knowing what it is good for. The world is full of artisans, and even more of artists, who have no natural talent for the art which they practice but into which they were driven in early childhood either through the conventional ideas of other people or because those around them were fooled by an apparent zeal that could have led them in a similar way to any other art they saw practised. This one hears a drum and fancies himself a general; that one sees a building and wants to be an architect. Every one is drawn towards the trade he sees others doing when he thinks it is highly estimed.
[697:] I once knew a footman who watched his master drawing and painting and took it into his head to become a designer and artist. From the moment he made this resolve he took up a pencil and then a brush which he never put down for the rest of his life. Without teaching or rules of art he began to draw everything he saw. Three whole years were devoted to these scribblings from which nothing but his duties could stir him, nor was he discouraged by the small progress resulting from his very mediocre talents. I have seen him spend the whole of a broiling summer in a little anteroom facing south, a room that felt suffocating even just to pass through. There he was seated, or rather nailed, all day to his chair, drawing a globe that was before him again and again and yet again with invincible obstinacy till he had reproduced the rounded surface to his own satisfaction. At last with his master's help and under the guidance of an artist he got so far as to abandon his livery and live by his brush. Perseverance substitutes for talent up to a certain point. He got so far, but no further. This honest boy's perseverance and ambition are praiseworthy; he will always be respected for his industry and steadfastness of purpose, but he will never get beyong painting panel friezes. Who would not have been deceived by his zeal and taken it for real talent? There is all the difference in the world between a liking and an aptitude. To make sure of real genius or real taste in a child calls for more accurate observations than is generally suspected, for the child displays his wishes not his capacity, and we judge by the former instead of considering the latter. I wish some judicious person would give us a treatise on the art of observing children. This art would be very important to know, but neither parents nor teachers have mastered its elements.
[698:] Perhaps we are laying too much stress on the choice of a trade. Because it is a question of manual work, this choice means little, and his apprenticeship is more than half accomplished already through the exercises which have up until now occupied him. What would you like him to do? He is ready for anything. He can handle the spade and hoe, he can use the lathe, hammer, plane, or file; he is already familiar with these tools which are common to many trades. He only needs to acquire sufficient skill in the use of any one of them to rival the speed, the familiarity, and the diligence of good workmen, and he will have a great advantage over them in suppleness of body and limb, so he can easily take any position and can continue any kind of movements without effort. Moreover his senses are acute and well-practised. He knows the principles of the various trades; to work like a master of his craft he only needs experience, and experience comes with practice. To which of those trades open to us will he give sufficient time to make himself a master of it? That is the whole question.
[699:] Give a man a trade that suits his sex, give a young man a trade that suits his age. Sedentary indoor employments that make the body tender and effeminate are neither pleasing nor suitable. No young boy ever aspired on his own to be a tailor; it is only through others' efforts that this feminine work attracts the sex for which it was not made.
[Note 10] The needle and the sword can not be wielded by the same hand. If I were sovereign I would only allow needlework and dressmaking to be done by women and by cripples who are obliged to work at such trades. Assuming eunuchs to be necessary, I think the orientals were very foolish to make them on purpose. Why not be contented with those provided by nature, with those crowds of low people whose hearts nature has mutilated? There would be plenty to spare. Every weak, delicate, fearful man is condemned by nature to a sedentary life; he is fit to live among women or in their manner. Let him practice one of the trades that is right for them; and if there must be true eunuchs let those men who dishonour their sex by adopting trades unworthy of it be reduced to that state. Their choice proclaims an error of nature; correct it one way or other, you will have only done well.
[700:]I forbid to my pupil the unhealthy trades, but not a difficult or dangerous one. He will exercise himself in strength and courage. Such trades are for men not women, who claim no share in them. Are not men ashamed to encroach upon the women's trades?"Luctantur paucæ, comedunt coliphia paucæ.Vos lanam trahitis, calathisque peracta refertisVellera."-- Juven. Sat. II. V. 55.
[701:] In Italy women are not seen in shops, and to persons accustomed to the streets of England and France nothing could look gloomier. When I saw drapers selling ladies ribbons, pompons, net, and chenille, I thought these delicate ornaments very absurd in the coarse hands fit to blow the bellows and strike the anvil. I said to myself, "In this country women should set up as steel-polishers and armourers." Let each make and sell the weapons of his or her own sex; knowledge is acquired through use.
[702:] Young man, impress on your work the hand of man. Learn to wield with a vigorous arm the ax and the plane, to square a beam, climb up to the rooftops, position the pinacle, firm it up with rafters and tie-beams. Then call to your sister to come help you with your work just as she tells you to help her with her needlepoint.
[703:] I have said too much for my agreeable contemporaries, I know. But I sometimes let myself be carried away by my argument. If any man is ashamed to work in public armed with an adze or wearing a leather apron, I think him a mere slave of public opinion, ready to blush for having done well as soon as he is laughed at by others. But let us yield to parents' prejudices so long as they do not hurt the children. To honour trades we are not obliged to practise every one of them, so long as we do not think them beneath us. When the choice is ours and we are under no compulsion, why not judge the pleasantness, attractiveness, and suitability of the different professions within the same rank? Choose the pleasanter, more attractive and more suitable trade. Metal work is useful, more useful, perhaps, than the rest, but unless a some special reason draws me to it, I would not make your child into a blacksmith, a locksmith nor an ironworker. I do not want to see him a Cyclops at the forge. Neither would I have him be a mason, still less a shoemaker. All trades must be carried on, but when the choice is ours, cleanliness should be taken into account. This is not a matter of mere opinion; our senses are our guides. Finally, I do not like those stupid trades in which the workmen mechanically perform the same action without pause and almost without mental effort. Weaving, stocking-knitting, stone-cutting; why employ intelligent men on such work? It is merely one machine leading another.
[704:] All things considered, the trade I should choose for my pupil, among the trades he likes, is that of a carpenter. It is clean and useful; it may be carried on at home; it gives enough exercise; it calls for skill and industry, and while fashioning articles for everyday use, there is scope for elegance and taste.
[705:] If by chance the genius of your pupil was clearly directed toward the speculative sciences, then I would not blame you for giving him a trade consistent with his inclinations. He might learn, for example, the make mathematical instruments, eyeglasses, telescopes, etc.
[706:] When Emile learns his trade I want to learn it with him, for I am convinced he will never learn anything thoroughly unless we learn it together. So we shall both serve our apprenticeship, and we do not mean to be treated as gentlemen but as real apprentices who are not there for fun. Why should we not actually be apprenticed? Peter the Great was a ship's carpenter and drummer to his own troops; was not that prince at least your equal in birth and merit? You understand this is addressed not to Emile but to you, whoever you may be.
[707:] Unfortunately we cannot spend the whole of our time in the workshop. We are not only apprentice carpenters but apprentice men , and the apprenticeship of this last trade is more painful and longer than the other. How will we thus manage? Shall we take a master to teach us the use of the plane and engage him by the hour like a dancing-master? No, that would make us not apprentices but students, and our ambition is not merely to learn carpentry but to be carpenters. I am thus of the view that once or twice a week we should spend the whole day at our master's; we should get up early, be at our work before him, take our meals with him, work under his orders, and after having had the honour of supper with his family we may if we please return to sleep upon our own hard beds. This is the way to learn several trades at once, to learn to do manual work without neglecting our other apprenticeship .
[708:] Let us do things simply while doing them well. Let us not reproduce vanity by our efforts to combat it. To pride ourselves on having conquered prejudice is to succumb to prejudice. It is said that in accordance with an old custom of the Ottomans, the sultan is obliged to work with his hands, and, as every one knows, the handiwork of a king is a masterpiece. So he royally distributes his masterpieces among the great lords of the Porte and the price paid is in accordance with the rank of the workman. What I see wrong with this is not the so-called inconvenience it causes; on the contrary, that is an advantage. By compelling the lords to share with him the spoils of the people it is much the less necessary for the prince to plunder the people directly. Despotism needs some such relaxation, and without it that horrible government could not last.
[709:] The real evil in such a custom is the idea it gives this poor man of his own worth. Like King Midas he sees all things turn to gold at his touch, but he does not see whose ears start growing as a result. Let us keep Emile's own ears short, let us preserve Emile's hands from such lucrative talent. The price of what he himself makes will be based not on the worker but on the work. Never let his work be judged by any standard but that of the work of a master. Let it be judged by the work itself, not because it is his. If anything is well done, I say, "There is something that is well made," but do not ask who made it. If he himself says with a proud and self-satisfied air, "I made it," answer indifferently, "You or someone else, it doesn't matter. It's still a well-made work."
[710:] Good mother, be on your guard against the deceptions prepared for you. If your son knows many things, distrust his knowledge; if he is unlucky enough to be educated in Paris and to be rich, he is ruined. As long as there are clever artists he will have all their talents, but apart from his masters he will have none. In Paris a rich man knows everything; it is the poor who are ignorant. Our capital is full of amateurs, especially women, who do their work as M. Gillaume invents his colours. Among the men I know of three striking exceptions; among the women I know no exceptions, and I doubt if there are any. In general a man acquires a name in the arts just like he acquires official robes; he becomes an artist and a judge of art just like he becomes a lawyer and a magistrate.
[711:] Thus if it were once admitted that it is a fine thing to have a trade, your children would soon have one without learning it. They would become postmasters like the councillors of Zurich. Let us have no such ceremonies for Emile; no appearances, only reality. Let us not say what he knows, let him learn in silence. Let him make his masterpiece, but not be hailed as master. Let him prove himself to be a worker not by his title but by his work.
[712:] If up until now I have made myself understood, you ought to realise how through habits of bodily exercise and manual work I unconsciously give my pupil the taste for reflection and meditation in order to counteract in him the indolence which could result from his indifference to men's judgments and his freedom from passion. He must work like a peasant and think like a philosopher if he is not to be as idle as a savage. The great secret of education is to use the exercises of the body and those of the mind as relaxations of each other.
[713:] But beware of anticipating instructions which demand more maturity of mind. Emile will not be a workman for long before he feels for himself those social inequalities that he had at first only observed. He will want to question me in turn on the maxims I have given him, maxims he is able to understand. By receiving everything from me alone, in seeing himself so close to the condition of poor people, he will want to know why I am so far removed from it. Out of the blue he may ask me some scathing questions. "You are rich. You have told me so and I see it. A rich man owes his work to society because he is a man. But what are you doing for society?" What would a fine tutor say to that? I do not know. He would perhaps be foolish enough to talk to the child of the care he bestows upon him. As for me, the workshop will get me out of the difficulty. "My dear Emile that is a very good question; I will undertake to answer for myself at the time when you can yourself give an answer that satisfies you. Meanwhile I will take care to give what I can spare to you and to the poor, and to make a table or a bench every week so as not to be completely useless to everyone."
[714:] We have come back to ourselves. Here our child is ready to cease being a child and to return to his own individuality. Here he is feeling more than ever the necessity that attaches him to things. After having begun by exercising his body and his senses we have exercised his mind and his judgment. Finally we have joined together the use of his limbs and his faculties. We have made him an active and thinking being. In order to make him a man, it remains for us to make him a lovable and sensitive being, that is to perfect reason by sentiment. But before entering into that new order of thinge, let us glance back on the one we have just left and see as precisely as possible how far we have come.
[715:] At first our pupil had merely sensations, now he has ideas. He could only feel, now he judges. For from the comparison of many successive or simultaneous sensations and the judgment arrived at with regard to them, there springs a sort of mixed or complex sensation which I call an idea.
[716:] The way in which ideas are formed gives a character to the human mind. The mind which forms its ideas from real relations is a solid mind; the mind which contents itself with apparent relations is superficial. He who sees relations as they are has an exact mind; he who estimate them poorly has an inaccurate mind; he who concocts imaginary relations which have neither reality nor appearance is a madman; he who does not perceive any relation at all is an imbecile. The greater or lesser aptitude for comparing ideas and finding connections between them is that which gives to men more or less intelligence, etc.
[717:] Simple ideas consist merely of compared sensations. Simple sensations involve judgments, as do the complex sensations that I call simple ideas. In sensation, judgment is purely passive; it affirms that one feels what one feels. In perception or idea, judgment is active; it connects, compares, it determines relations not determined by the senses. That is the main difference, but it is great . Nature never deceives us; it is always we who deceive ourselves.
[718:] I see some one giving an ice-cream to an eight-year-old child. He brings the spoon to his mouth without knowing what it is and, struck by the cold, cries out, "Ah, it burns!" He experiences a sharp sensation; he knows no sensation sharper than the heat of fire and believes that that is what he feels. However, he is mistaken. Cold hurts, but it does not burn; and these two sensations are not the same, for those who have experienced both do not confuse them. So it is not the sensation that deceives him but the judgment he forms with regard to it.
[719:] It is just the same with those who see a mirror or some optical instrument for the first time, or enter a deep cellar in the depths of winter or at midsummer, or dip a very hot or cold hand into tepid water, or roll a little ball between two crossed fingers. If they are content to say what they really feel, their judgment, being purely passive, cannot go wrong; but when they judge according to appearances, their judgment is active; by induction it compares and establishes relations that are not really perceived. Then such people are deceived or can be deceived. In order to correct or prevent the error one needs experience.
[720:] Show your pupil the clouds at night passing between himself and the moon; he will think the moon is moving in the opposite direction and that the clouds are stationary. He will think this through a hasty induction because he generally sees small objects moving in relation to larger ones, and the clouds seems larger than the moon whose distance is beyond his reckoning. When he watches the shore from a moving boat he falls into the opposite mistake and thinks the earth is moving because he does not feel the motion of the boat and considers it along with the sea or river as one motionless whole, of which the shore, which appears to move, forms no part.
[721:] The first time a child sees a stick half immersed in water he thinks he sees a broken stick; the sensation is true and would not cease to be true even if he knew the reason of this appearance. So if you ask him what he sees, he replies, "A broken stick," for he is quite sure he is experiencing this sensation. But when deceived by his judgment he goes further and, after saying he sees a broken stick, he affirms that it really is broken he says what is not true. Why? Because he becomes active and judges no longer by observation but by induction; he affirms what he does not perceive, i.e., that the judgment he receives through one of his senses would be confirmed by another.
[722:] Since all our errors arise in our judgment, it is clear that if we had no need for judgment we should not need to learn. We should never be liable to mistakes; we would be happier in our ignorance than we can be in our knowledge. Who can deny that those who are learned know a thousand true things that ignorant people will never know? Are the learned for thus any nearer truth? On the contrary, the further they progress the further away from it they get. Since the vanity of their judgment outpaces their enlightenment, each truth that they learn comes at the expense of a hundred false judgments. Every one knows that the learned societies of Europe are nothing but public schools for lying; and there are assuredly more errors in the Academy of Sciences than in a whole tribe of Huron Indians.
[723:] Because the more men know the more they are mistaken, the only means of avoiding error is ignorance. Form no judgments and you will never be wrong. This is the lesson of nature as well as of reason. Outside of the small number of immediate and clearly perceptible things related to us, we naturally have a profound indifference to all the rest. A savage will not turn his head to watch the working of the finest machinery or all the wonders of electricity. "What does that matter to me?" is the saying most common to the ignorant and most convenient to the wise.
[724:] But unluckily this phrase will no longer suit us. Everything matters to us since we are dependent on everything, and our curiosity naturally increases with our needs. This is why I attribute much curiosity to the philosophe and none to the savage. The latter needs no help from anyone; the former needs every one, especially admirers.
[725:] You will tell me I am going beyond nature. I think not. She chooses her instruments and orders them, not according to opinion but to need. Now a man's needs change according to his circumstances. There is a great difference between a natural man living in a state of nature and a natural man living in society. Emile is no savage to be banished to the desert; he is a savage made to live in cities. He must know how to make his living there, how to make the best of its inhabitants, and how to live if not like them at least with them.
[726:] Because in the midst of so many new relations that he will have to depend on it will be necessary in spite of himself for him to judge, teach him therefore how to judge well.
[727:] The best way of learning to judge well is is the way that tends to simplify our experiences and even enable us to dispense with them altogether without falling into error. Hence it follows that after having for a long time verified the experience of one sense by that of another, we must still learn to verify each sense experience by itself. Then each of our sensations will become an idea, and this idea will always correspond to the truth. This is the sort of accomplishment with which I have tried to fill this third age of human life.
[728:] This method of procedure demands a patience and circumspection of which few teachers are capable and without which the pupil will never learn to judge. If for example, when your pupil is mistaken by the appearance of the broken stick you rush to take the stick out of the water in order to show him his error, you may perhaps undeceive him; but what have you taught him? Nothing more than he would soon have learnt for himself. That is not what one must do!. It is less a question of teaching him a truth than of showing him how to set about discovering it for himself. To teach him better you must not be in such a hurry to correct his mistakes. Let us take Emile and myself as an illustration.
[729:] To begin with, any child educated in the usual way could not fail to answer the second of my imaginary questions in the affirmative. He will say, "That is certainly a broken stick." I very much doubt whether Emile will give the same reply. Seeing no necessity for being a scholar or pretending to be one, he is never in a hurry to draw conclusions. He only judges on the basis of evidence and he is far from having it on this occasion. For he knows how much our judgements of appearances are subject to illusion, even if it is only a simple question of perspective.
[730:] Moreover, since he knows by experience that my most frivolous questions always have some purpose that is not at first obvious, he has not developed the habit of answering blindly. On the contrary, he is on his guard. He pays attention; he examines things with great care before answering. He never gives me an answer unless he is satisfied with it himself, and he is hard to satisfy. Finally neither of us take any pride in merely knowing the truth of things but only in avoiding mistakes. We should be more ashamed to deceive ourselves with bad reasoning than to find no explanation at all. "I do not know" is a phrase that suits us both fine and that we repeat so often that it costs neither one of us anything to use it. But whether he gives the silly answer or whether he avoids it by our convenient phrase "I do not know," my answer is the same. Let us see, let us examine it.
[731:] This stick immersed half way in the water is fixed in an upright position. To know if it is broken as it seems to be, how many things must be done before we take it out of the water or even touch it?1 First we walk round it, and we see that the broken part follows us. So it is only our eye that changes it; looks do not make things move.2 We look straight down on that end of the stick which is above the water. Then the stick is no longer bent,_ the end near our eye exactly hides the other end. Has our eye set the stick straight?3 We stir the surface of the water; we see the stick break into several pieces, move in zigzags and follow the ripples of the water. Can the motion we gave the water suffice to break, soften. or melt the stick like this?4 We make the water recede, and little by little we see the stick straightening itself as the water sinks. Is not this more than enough to enlighten us as to the fact and reveal refraction? So it is not true that our eyes deceive us, for nothing more has been required to correct the mistakes attributed to it.
[732:] Suppose the child were stupid enough not to perceive the result of these experiments, then you must call touch to the help of sight. Instead of taking the stick out of the water, leave it where it is and let the child pass his hand along it from end to end; he will feel no angle, therefore the stick is not broken.
[733:] You will tell me this is not mere judgment but formal reasoning. That is true; but do you not see that as soon as the mind has got any ideas at all, every judgment is a process of reasoning? The consciousness of all every sensation is a proposition, a judgement. Thus as soon as we compare one sensation with another, we are beginning to reason. The art of judging and the art of reasoning are exactly the same.
[734:] Emile will never learn dioptrics unless he learns with this stick. He will not have dissected insects nor counted the spots on the sun; he will not know what you mean by a microscope or a telescope. Your doctrinaire pupils will laugh at his ignorance and will not be wrong, for before using these instruments I intend that he invent them, and you suspect that that will not happen very soon.
[735:] This is the spirit of my whole method at this stage. If the child rolls a little ball between two crossed fingers and thinks he feels two balls, I shall not let him look until he is convinced there is only one.
[736:] These explanation will suffice, I hope, to mark clearly the progress that the mind of my pupil has made up until now and the route followed by him. But perhaps you are astounded by the quantity of things that I have brought before him. You fear that I will overwhelm his mind with this multitude of knowledge. On the contrary, I am rather teaching him to be ignorant of things than to know them. I am showing him the path of science, easy indeed, but long, far-reaching and slow to follow. I am making him take the first steps so that he will recognize the entrance, but I do not allow him to go far.
[737:] Forced to learn for himself, he uses his own reason not that of others. For in order for there to be nothing given to opinion there must be nothing given to authority, and most of our errors come much less from ourselves than from others. From this continual exercise should result a vigour of mind similar to that acquired by the body through work and fatique. Another advantage is that one only advances in proportion to one's strength. Neither mind nor body carries more than it can bear. When the understanding appropriates things before depositing them in the memory, what is drawn from that store later on is his own. Otherwise one overcharges the memory without knowing it and is liable to drawing nothing suitable from it.
[738:] Emile knows little, but what he knows is really his own. He knows nothing half-way. Among the small number things he knows and knows well the most important is that there is much that he is ignorant of and that he can some day know, even more that other men know and that he will never in his life know, and an infinite number of other things that no man will ever know. He has a universal mind not through knowledge but through the power of acquiring it. He is open-minded, intelligent, ready for anything, and, as Montaigne says, if not learned, capable of learning I am content if he knows the "Wherefore" of everything he does and the "Why" of everything he believes. Once more my object is not to give him science, but teach him to acquire it when needed, to make him to estimate exactly what it is worth, and to make him love truth above all. By this method progress is slow but we never make a useless step and we are never forced to go backwards.
[739:] Emile's knowledge is confined to nature and things. He doesn't even know the name of history, nor what metaphysics and morals are. He knows the essential relations between men and things, but nothing of the moral relations between man and man. He knows little about how to generalize ideas, little about how to make abstractions. He perceives that certain qualities are common to certain things without reasoning about these qualities themselves. He is acquainted with the abstract idea of space by the help of his geometrical figures; he is acquainted with the abstract idea of quantity by the help of his algebraical symbols. These figures and signs are the supports on which these ideas may be said to rest, the supports on which his senses repose. He does not attempt to know things by their nature, but only by the relations that interest him. He only judges what is foreign to himself in relation to himself, but this estimation is exact and certain. Fantasy and conventions have no part in it. He values most the things which are of use to himself, and as he never departs from this standard of values, he owes nothing to opinion.
[740:] Emile is hard-working, temperate, patient, steady, and full of courage. His unlit imagination never exaggerates danger; he feels few pains and knows how to suffer with firmness because he has not learnt to rebel against fate. As to death, he doesn't even know what it is; but accustomed to submit without resistance to the law of necessity, when it is necessary for him to die he will die without a groan and without a struggle. That is as much as we can demand of nature in that hour which we all abhor. To live freely and to give little weight to human things is the best way to learn how to die.
[741:] In a word Emile has virtue in all that which relates to himself. To also have the social virtues he only needs to know the relations which make those virtues necessary. He only lacks a knowledge which he is quite ready to receive.
[742:] He considers himself without regard to others and finds it good that others hardly think of him. He demands nothing from anyone and and believes that he owes nothing to anyone. He is alone in human society and he depends only on himself. He has more right than another to count on himself, for he is all that a boy can be at his age. He has no errors, or at least only has those that are inevitable. He has no vices, or only those from which no man can escape. He has a healthy body, supple limbs, a mind that is accurate and without prejudice, a heart is free and untroubled by passions. Amour-propre, the earliest and the most natural of passions, has scarcely shown itself. Without disturbing the peace of anyone, he has lived as contented, happy, and free as nature permits. Do you think that a child who has reached his fifteenth year in this condition has wasted the preceding ones?
[743:] How rapidly we pass through life on earth! The first quarter of life slips away before we know how to use it; the last quarter slips away after we have ceased to enjoy it. At first we do not know how to live; soon we are not able to live. In the interval between these two useless extremes three-quarters of the time left to us is consumed by sleep, work, pain, constraints, and every kind of suffering. Life is short, less because of the little time it lasts than because we have hardly any time to savor what little of it there is. In vain is the moment of death set apart from that of birth; life is always too short when this space is badly filled.
[744:] We are born, so to speak, twice: once to exist, the other to live; one time for our species and another for our sex. Those who regard woman as an imperfect man are wrong without doubt, but the analogy based on externals supports them. Up to the age of puberty children of both sexes have nothing to distinguish them in appearance. They both have the same face, the same figure, the same complexion, the same voice -- everything is equal. Girls are children and boys are children; the same name suffices for beings so similar. Males whose later sexual development has been impeded preserve this resemblance all their lives; they are always big children; and women who never lose this resemblance seem in many ways never to be anything else.
[745:] But man in general is not meant to remain always in childhood. He will leave it at the time prescribed by nature; and this moment of crisis, although very short, has long-term influences.
[746:] Like the rumbling of the sea that precedes a storm from afar, so the murmur of rising passions announces this tumultuous revolution. A bubbling undercurrent warns of the the approaching danger. Changes of temper, frequent outbreaks of anger, a continual agitation of the mind, make the child almost ungovernable. He becomes deaf to the voice that used to make him manageable; he is a lion in a fever. He disregards his guide; he wants no longer to be controlled.
[747:] Along with the moral symptoms of a changing temper come perceptible changes in appearance. His face develops and takes on the stamp of his character; the soft and sparse down at the base of his cheeks becomes darker and takes on consistency. His voice changes, or rather he loses it altogether; he is neither a child nor a man and cannot take the tone of either. His eyes, those organs of the soul which have said nothing until now, find their own language and expression. A growing fire animates them. Their livelier glances still have a sacred innocence, but they no long keep their earlier dumbness; he already feels that they can say too much. He begins to know how to lower them and blush. He is becoming sensitive before knowing that he feels; he is restless without reason. All this may come slowly and still give you time; but if his vivacity makes him too impatient, if outbursts change into fury, if he becomes angry then gentle from one moment to the next, if he weeps without cause, if in the presence of objects which are beginning to be a source of danger his pulse quickens and his eyes light up, if he trembles when a woman's hand touches his, if he is troubled or timid in her presence, 0 Ulysses, wise Ulysses! take care! The goatskin sacks you sealed with so much care are open; the winds are unloosed; do not leave the helm for a minute or all is lost.
[748:] This is the second birth I spoke of. It is now that man is truly born to life and that nothing human is foreign to him. Until now our efforts have been child's play; it is only now that they take on a true importance. This period when ordinary educations end is just the time when ours ought to begin. But to explain this new plan properly, let us review from a distance the state of things that relate to it.
[749:] Our passions are the principle means of our self-preservation; it is therefore an enterprise as vain as it is ridiculous to wish to destroy them. That would be to control nature, to wish to reform the work of God. If God told man to annihilate the passions he gives him, God would both will and not will; he would contradict himself. He has never given such an insane command; nothing like it is written on the human heart, and what God wants a man to do, he does not have it said by another man, he says it to him himself. He writes it in the bottom of his heart.
[750:] Now I consider anyone who would prevent the birth of the passions almost as foolish as he who would like to annihilate them; and those who believe that this has been my project up until now have strongly misunderstood me.
[751:] But would we be reasoning correctly, if from the fact that passions are natural to man, we went on to conclude that all of the passions we feel in ourselves and that we see in others are natural? Their source is natural, it is true; but they have been swollen by a thousand other streams; they are a great river that is constantly growing and in which one can scarcely find a few drops of the original stream. Our natural passions are very limited; they are the instruments of our liberty, they tend to preserve us. All those which subjugate and destroy us come to us from elsewhere. Nature does not give them to us; we appropriate them at her expense.
[752:] The source of our passions, the origin and principle of all the others, the only one that is born with man and never leaves him as long as he lives, is amour de soi -- a passion that is primitive, innate, anterior to any other, and of which all the others are in a sense only modifications. In this sense, if you like, they are all natural. But most of these modifications have external causes without which they would never occur, and these same modifications, far from being advantageous to us, are harmful. They change the original purpose and work against their principle, Then it is that man finds himself outside nature and puts himself in contradiction with himself.
[753:] Amour de soi-même is always good and always in accordance with order. Each of us being charged especially with our own preservation, the first and the most important of our cares is and ought to be to ceaselessly watch over it; and how can we continually watch over it, if we do not take the greatest interest in it?
[754:] We must therefore love ourselves in order to preserve ourselves, and it follows directly from this same sentiment that we love that which preserves us. Every child clings to its nurse; Romulus must have clung to the she-wolf who suckled him. At first this attachment is purely mechanical. That which favors the well-being of an individual attracts him, that which harms him repells him; this is nothing but blind instinct. What transforms this instinct into feeling -- the the attachment into love, the aversion into hatred -- is the manifested intention to help us or to harm us. We do not become passionately attached to insensitive objects that only follow the direction given them. But those from which we expect either good or evil from their internal disposition, from their will, those we see acting freely for or against us, inspire us with feelings similar to those they show towards us. Something does us good, we seek it out; but we love the person who does us good. Something harms us, and we shrink from it; but we hate the person who tries to hurt us.
[755:] The child's first sentiment is to love himself, and the second, which derives from the first, is to love those around him. For in his present state of weakness he is aware of people only through the help and attention he receives from them. At first his affection for his nurse and his governess is mere habit. He seeks them because he needs them and because it feels good to have them; it is more like consciousness than benevolence. He needs a long time to understand that not only are they are useful to him but that they want to be useful to him. It is then that he begins to love them.
[756:] So a child is naturally disposed to kindly feeling because he sees that every one about him is inclined to help him, and he gets from this observation the habit of a sentiment favorable to his species. But as he expands his relations, his needs, his active or passive dependencies, the feeling of his relations to others awakens and produces a feeling of duties and preferences. Then the child becomes imperious, jealous, deceitful, and vindictive. When he is coerced to obey, if he does not see the usefulness of what he is told to do, he attributes it to caprice, to an intention of tormenting him, and he rebels. When, on the other hand, people obey him, then as soon as anything opposes him he regards it as rebellion, as an intention to resist him; he beats the chair or table for disobeying him. Amour de soi, which concerns only ourselves, is content when our true needs are satisfied; but amour-propre, which makes comparisons, is never satisfied and never can be. For this sentiment, which prefers ourselves to others, requires also that others prefer us to themselves, which is impossible. This is how the gentle and affectionate passions are born from amour de soi, and how the hateful and irrascible passions are born from amour propre. Thus what makes man essentially good is to have few needs and to compare himself little with others; what makes him essentially evil is to have many needs and to depend much on opinion. By this principle it is easy to see how one can direct to good or evil all the passions of children and of men. It is true that being unable to live always alone they will with difficulty always be good. This problem will by necessity even increase with their relations; and it is in this above all else that the dangers of society make art and care more indispensable in order to prevent in the human heart the depravity that is born with these new needs.
[757:] The proper study for man is that of his relations. As long as he only knows himself through his physical being, he should study himself in relation with things. This is the occupation of his childhood. When he begins to feel his moral being, he should study himself in relation with men. This is the occupation of his entire life, to be begun at the point where we have now arrived.
[758:] As soon as a man needs a companion he is no longer an isolated being; his heart is no longer alone. All his relations with his species, all the affections of his heart, come into being along with this. His first passion soon arouses the rest.
[759:] The direction of the instinct is uncertain. One sex is attracted by the other; that is movement of nature. Choice, preferences, personal attachments, are the work of enlightenment, prejudice, and habit. Time and knowledge are necessary to make us capable of love; we do not love until after having judged or prefer until after having compared. These judgments happen without anyone being aware of them, but they are for that not less real. True love, whatever one may say about it, will always be honored by man. For although its transports lead us astray, although it does not exclude from the heart certain detestable qualities and even can give rise to them, yet it always presupposes certain estimable characteristics without which we would be incapable of feeling that love. This choice that people put in opposition to reason really springs from reason. We say love is blind because its eyes are better than ours, and it sees relations that we cannot perceive. For a person who had no idea of merit or of beauty all women would be equally good, and the first comer would always be the most lovable. Far from coming from nature, love is the rule and the curb of nature's leanings. It is love that makes one sex indifferent to the other, the loved one alone excepted.
[760:] We wish to obtain the same preference that we grant; so love must be reciprocal. To be loved one must be lovable; to be preferred one must be more lovable than another -- more lovable than all the others, at least in the eyes of the beloved. Hence the first regards towards one's peers; hence the first comparisons with them; hence emulation, rivalry, and jealousy. A heart full of an overflowing sentiment loves to expand; from the need for a mistress there soon springs the need for a friend. He who feels how sweet it is to be loved desires to be loved by everyone; and there could be no preferences if there were not many disappointments. With love and friendship are born dissension, enmity, hatred. From the heart of so many passions I see opinion raising its unshakable throne, and foolish mortals, enslaved by its empire, base their very existence merely on what other people think.
[761:] Extend these ideas and you will see where we get the form of amour-propre that we imagine is natural, and how amour de soi, ceasing to be an absolute sentiment, becomes pride in great minds, vanity in small ones, and in both ceaselesly feeds itself at the expense of one's neighbor. Passions of this kind have no seed in a child's heart and cannot spring up in it by themselves; it is we who carry them there, and they would never take root except through our own fault. But it is not so with the heart of a young man. Whatever we do such passions will appear in spite of us. It is therefore time to change our method.
[762:] Let us begin with some important reflections on the critical stage under discussion. The passage from childhood to puberty is not so clearly determined by nature that it doesn't vary in individuals according temperament and in peoples according to climate. Everybody knows the differences which have been observed in this regard between hot and cold countries, and every one sees that ardent temperaments mature earlier than others. But we may be mistaken as to the causes, and we may often attribute to physical causes what is really due to moral: this is one of the commonest errors in the philosophy of our times. The teachings of nature come late and slow, those of men are almost always premature. In the first case, the senses awaken the imagination, in the second the imagination awakens the senses; it gives them a precocious activity which cannot fail to enervate, to weaken first the individual and, in the long run, the species. A more general and more sure observation than the one about the effect of the climates is that puberty and sexual power is always more precocious among educated and civilized peoples than among the ignorant and barbarous ones.
[Note 1] Children have a singular capacity to discern immoral habits beneath the tricks of decency with which they are concealed. The purified speech dictated to them, the lessons in good behavior they are given, the veil of mystery people affect to hang before their eyes, are so many pricks to their curiosity. From the way you go about it, it is clear that they are meant to learn what you profess to conceal; and of all you teach them this is most quickly assimilated.
[763:] Consult experience and you will understand to what point this insane method accelerates the work of nature and ruins the temperament. This is one of the principle causes of the degeneration of the race in our cities. The young people, prematurely exhausted, remain small, feeble, misshapen; they grow old instead of growing up -- like the vine that is forced to bear fruit in spring fades and dies before autumn.
[764:] One must have lived among rude and simple people to know to what age a happy ignorance may prolong the innocence of children. It is a sight both touching and amusing to see both sexes, left to the protection of their own hearts, continuing the sports of childhood into the flower of youth and beauty and showing by their very familiarity the purity of their pleasures. When finally those lovable young people marry, they are mutually exchanging the first fruits of their person and thereby become all the more dear to each other. Multitudes of healthy robust children are the pledges of a union which nothing can alter and the products of the wisdom of their early years.
[765:] If the age at which a man becomes conscious of his sex differs as much by the effects of education as by the action of nature, it follows that one may accelerate or delay this age according to the way in which one raises one's children; and if the body gains or loses consistency in proportion as one delays or accelerates this progress, it also follows that the more we try to delay it the stronger and more vigorous will the young man be. I am still speaking of purely physical effects; we will soon see that we are not limited to them.
[766:] From these reflections I derive a solution to the question, so often discussed, of whether it is better to enlighten children early on as to the objects of their curiosity or to put them off with modest lies. I think that one need do neither. In the first place, this curiosity will not come to them unless one provides the occasion for it; we must therefore make sure not to provide the occasion for it. In the second place, questions one is not forced to answer do not require us to deceive those who ask them. It is better to impose silence than to answer by lying. He will not be greatly surprised by this law if you have already accustomed him to it in matters of no importance. Finally, if you decide to answer his questions, do it with the greatest simplicity -- without mystery, without embarrassment, without smiles. It is much less dangerous to satisfy a child's curiosity than to excite it.
[767:] Your answers should always be grave, brief, decided, and without seeming to hesitate. I need not add that they should be true. We cannot teach children the danger of telling lies to men without realizing, on the man's part, the greater danger of telling lies to children. A single lie on the part of the teacher will forever ruin the fruit of his education.
[768:] Complete ignorance with regard to certain matters is perhaps the best thing for children; but let them learn very early those things that are impossible to hide from them forever. Either their curiosity must never be aroused in any way, or it must be satisfied before the age when it becomes a source of danger. Your conduct towards your pupil in this respect depends greatly on his particular situation, the society which surrounds him, the circumstances you predict he may find himself in, etc. It is important here that nothing be left to chance; and if you are not sure of keeping him in ignorance about the difference between the sexes until he is sixteen, take care that he learns it before he is ten.
[769:] I do not like people to affect a purified language in speaking with children, nor to make long detours in order to avoid giving things their true name. They are always found out if they do. Good manners in these things have much simplicity; but an imagination soiled by vice makes the ear over-sensitive and compels us to be constantly refining our expressions. Gross terms are without consequence; it is lascivious ideas which must be avoided.
[770:] Although modesty is natural to man, children do not have it naturally. Modesty only begins with the knowledge of evil; and how should children who do not and should not have this knowledge have the sentiment which results from it? To give them lessons in modesty and good conduct is to teach them that there are things shameful and bad, and to give them a secret desire to know what these things are. Sooner or later they will find out, and the first spark which touches the imagination will certainly hasten the kindling of the senses. Anyone who blushes is already guilty; true innocence is ashamed of nothing.
[771:] Children do not have the same desires as men; but subjected like them to the same improprieties which offend the senses, they may with regard to this one subjection receive the same lessons in decency. Follow the spirit of nature, which has located in the same place the organs of secret pleasures and those of disgusting needs. Nature teaches us the same precautions at different ages, sometimes by means of one idea and sometimes by another -- to the man through modesty, to the child through cleanliness.
[772:] I can only find one good way of preserving the child's innocence; that is have all those who surround him respect and love it. Without this all our efforts to keep him in ignorance fail sooner or later. A smile, a wink, a careless gesture tell him all we sought to hide; it is enough to let him know that there is something we want to hide from him. The delicate phrases and expressions used by polite people among each other assume a knowledge which children ought not to possess and are inappropriate for them. But when we truly honor the child's simplicity we easily find in talking to him the simple phrases which are suitable. There is a certain naiveté of language that is suitable and pleasing to innocence; this is the right tone to adopt in order to distract the child from a dangerous curiosity. By speaking simply to him about everything you do not let him suspect there is anything left unsaid. By connecting coarse words with the unpleasant ideas which belong to them, you quench the first spark of imagination. You do not forbid the child to say these words or to form these ideas; but without him thinking about it you make recalling them repugnant to him. And how much confusion is spared to those who speaking from the heart always say the right thing, and say it as they themselves have felt it!
[773:] "How are babies made?" -- an embarrassing question that occurs very naturally to children, and one which foolishly or wisely answered sometimes can determine their habits and their health for life. The quickest way for a mother to avoid it without deceiving her son is to impose silence on him. This would be fine if he has always been accustomed to it in matters of no importance and if he does not suspect some mystery from this new tone. But rarely does the mother stop there. "It is the married people's secret," she will say, "little boys should not be so curious." This is good for getting the mother out of an embarrassing situation, but she must know that the little boy, piqued by her scornful manner, will not have a moment's rest until he has found out the married people's secret, and he will not take long to learn it.
[774:] Permit me to recount a very different answer which I heard given to the same question, one which struck me all the more coming as it did from a woman as modest in speech as in her manners, but who, when the need arose, was able to throw aside the false fear of blame and the vain jests of the foolish for the welfare of her child and for the cause of virtue. Not long before the child had passed a small stone in his urine which had torn the urethra, but the trouble was over and forgotten. "Mamma," said the eager child, "how are children made?" "My child," replied his mother without hesitation, "women piss them out with pains that sometimes cost them their life." Let fools laugh and silly people be scandalized; but let the wise inquire if it is possible to find a more judicious answer and one which would better serve its purpose.
[775:] In the first place the thought of a natural and known need turns the child's thoughts away from the idea of a mysterious process. The accompanying ideas of pain and death cover it with a veil of sadness which deadens the imagination and suppresses curiosity; everything leads the mind to the results, not the causes, of child-birth. The infirmities of human nature, disgusting objects, images of suffering -- these are the elucidations that the response would lead to if the repugnance inspired by the answer allowed the child to inquire further. How could any agitation of the desires have the chance to develop in conversations directed in this way? And yet you see the truth has not been altered and that there is no need to deceive one's pupil in order to instruct him.
[776:] Your children read; in the course of their reading they get knowledge they would never have if they had not read. If they study, their imagination is fired up and sharpened in the silence of the library. If they move in the world of society, they hear a strange jargon, they see examples of things that shock them. They have been so well persuaded that they are men, that in everything men do in their presence they immediately try to find how that will suit themselves; the actions of others must indeed serve as a model when the opinions of others are their law. Servants who are made to depend on them, and consequently are anxious to please them, court them at the expense of their morals. Giggling governesses make propositions to the four-year-old child which the most shameless woman would not dare to make when he is fifteen. They soon forget what they said, but the child has not forgotten what he heard. Loose conversation prepares the way for licentious conduct; the child is debauched by the cunning lacquey, and the secret of the one guarantees the secret of the other.
[777:] The child brought up in accordance with his age is alone. He knows no attachment but that of habit. He loves his sister like his watch and his friend like his dog. He is unconscious of his sex and his species; men and women are alike unknown; he does not connect either what they say or what they do with himself; he neither sees nor hears, or he pays no attention to them. Their speeches do not interest him any more than their exmples; all that is not made for him. This is no artificial error induced by our method, it is the ignorance of nature. The time will come when even nature will take care to enlighten her pupil, and only then does she make him capable of profiting without danger from the lessons that she gives him. This is our principle. The details of its rules are not my subject, and the means I propose with regard to other matters will still serve to illustrate this one.
[778:] Do you wish to establish order and rule among the rising passions? Then prolong the period of their development, so that they may have time to find their proper place as they arise. Then it is not man who orders them but nature herself; your task is merely to leave it in her hands. If your pupil were alone, you would have nothing to do; but everything that surrounds him enflames his imagination. A flood of prejudices sweeps him along. In order to hold him back one must push him in the opposite direction. Feeling must enchain the imagination and reason must silence the opinion of men. The source of all the passions is sensibility; the imagination determines their course Every being that is aware of his relations must be affected when these relations change and when he imagines or believes he imagines others better adapted to his nature. It is the errors of the imagination which transform into vices the passions of all finite beings, even of angels, if indeed they have passions; for it would be necessary to know the nature of every creature to realize what relations are best adapted to oneself.
[779:] This is the sum of human wisdom with regard to the use of the passions: 1: to feel the true relations of man both in the species and the individual; 2: to order all the affections in accordance with these relations.
[780:] But can man master the ordering of his affections according to such and such relations? No doubt he can master the direction of his imagination on this or that object, or to form this or that habit. Moreover, it is less a question here what a man can do for himself than it is with what we can do for our pupil through our choice of the circumstances in which he shall be placed. To show the means by which he may be kept in the path of nature is to say enough about enough how one might stray from that path.
[781:] So long as his consciousness is confined to himself there is no morality in his actions. It is only when it begins to extend beyond himself that he forms first the sentiments and then the ideas of good and bad, which make him truly a man and an integral part of his species. To begin with we must therefore confine our observations to this point.
[782:] These observations are difficult to make, for we must reject the examples before our eyes, and seek out those in which the successive developments follow the order of nature.
[783:] A sophisticated, polished, and civilized child, who is only awaiting the power to put into practice the precocious instruction he has received, is never mistaken with regard to the moment when this power is acquired. Far from awaiting it, he accelerates it. He stirs his blood to a premature ferment; he knows what should be the object of his desires long before those desires are experienced. It is not nature which stimulates him; it is he who forces nature. She has nothing to teach him by making him a man; he was a man in thought long before he was a man in reality.
[784:] The true course of nature is slower and more gradual. Little by little the blood grows warmer, the faculties expand, the character is formed. The wise workman who directs the process is careful to perfect all these instruments before putting them to work. The first desires are preceded by a long period of unrest, they are deceived by a prolonged ignorance, they know not what they want. The blood ferments and becomes agitated; a superabundance of life seeks to extend itself outwards. The eye grows animated and surveys others; we begin to be interested in those around us; we begin to feel that we are not meant to live alone. Thus the heart opens itself to human affections and becomes capable of attachment.
[785:] The first sentiment that the well-raised young man is susceptible to is not love but friendship. The first action of his rising imagination is to teach him that he has fellow human beings and that the species affects him before the sex. Here is another advantage of prolonged innocence: you may take advantage of his dawning sensibility to sow the first seeds of humanity in the heart of the young adolescent. This advantage is all the the more precious because this is the only time in his life when such efforts may be truly successful.
[786:] I have always observed that young men corrupted early on and given over to women and debauchery are inhuman and cruel. Their passionate temperament makes them impatient, vindictive, and angry. Their imagination fixes on one object only, and refuses all the rest; they know neither pity nor mercy; they would have sacrificed father, mother, the whole world, to the least of their pleasures. A young man, on the other hand, who is brought up in happy simplicity is drawn by the first stirrings of nature to the tender and affectionate passions. His compassionate heart is touched by the sufferings of his fellow-creatures; he trembles with delight when he meets his friend. His arms know how to embrace tenderly, his eyes know how to shed tears of tenderness. He is sensitive to the shame of displeasing and to the the remorse of having offended. If the eager warmth of his blood makes him quick, hasty, and passionate, a moment later you see all his natural kindness of heart in the eagerness of his repentance; he weeps, he groans over the wound he has given, he wants to atone for the blood he has shed with his own. Faced with the sentiment of his wrong-doing, his anger dies away, his pride is humbled. Is he himself offended? In the height of his fury an excuse, a word, disarms him: he forgives the wrongs of others as wholeheartedly as he repairs his own. Adolescence is not the age of vengeance or of hate; it is the age of pity, forgiveness, and generosity. Yes, I maintain, and I am not afraid of the testimony of experience, that a youth of good birth, one who has preserved his innocence up to the age of twenty, is at this age the most generous, the best, the most loving and most lovable of men. You never heard such a thing; I can well believe it. Philosophers such as you, brought up among the corruption of the schools, are unaware of it.
[787:] It is man's weakness that makes him sociable. It is our common sufferings draw our hearts to humanity; we would owe nothing to mankind if we were not men. Every attachment is a sign of insufficiency. If each of us had no need of others, we should hardly think of associating with them. Thus from our very weakness is born our frail happiness. A truly happy being is a solitary being. God alone enjoys an absolute happiness; but which of us has any idea of it? If any imperfect being could be sufficient to itself, what according to us would he be able to enjoy? He would be alone, he would be miserable. I do not conceive how one who has no need of anything could love anything; I do not conceive how he who loves nothing could be happy.
[788:] It follows from this that we are drawn towards our fellow beings less by the sentiment of their pleasures than by that of their pains; for there we see much better the the identification of our nature and the guarantees of their affection for us. If our common needs unite us by interest, our common miseries unite us by affection. The sight of a happy man inspires in others less love than envy; one is ready to accuse him of usurping a right that he does not have, of creating for himself an exclusive happiness; and amour-propre suffers more by making us feel that this man has no need of us. But who does not feel sorry for the unhappy man who is seen suffering? Who would not wish to deliver him from his pains if it cost only a wish to do so? Imagination puts us into the place of the miserable man sooner than into the place of of the happy man; we sense that former condition touches us more nearly than the latter. Pity is sweet because by putting ourselves in the place of one who suffers we nevertheless feel the pleasure of not suffering like him. Envy is bitter in that the sight of a happy man, far from putting the envious in his place, inspires him with regret that he is not there. The one seems to exempt us from the pains he suffers, the other seems to deprive us of the good things he enjoys.
[789:] Do you wish to stimulate and nourish these first stirrings of awakening sensibility in the heart of a young man -- to turn his disposition towards beneficence and goodness? Then avoid planting the seeds of pride, vanity, and envy through the misleading picture of the happiness of men; do not show him to begin with the pomp of courts, the pride of palaces, the delights of spectacles; do not take him into society and into brilliant assemblies. Do not show him the externals of high society until after having put him in a condition to appreciate it on its own terms. To show him the world before he is knows men is not to form him but to corrupt him; not to instruct him but to deceive him.
[790:] By nature men are neither kings, nobles, courtiers, nor millionaires. All men are born naked and poor, all are subject to the miseries of life, its sorrows, its ills, its needs, its suffering of every kind; finally all are condemned to die. This is what man really is; this is what no mortal can escape. Begin then by studying that which is the most inseparable from human nature, that which best constitutes humanity
[791:] At sixteen the adolescent knows what it is to suffer, for he himself has suffered; but he hardly knows that others suffer too; to see it without feeling it is not to know it, and as I have said a hundred times the child who does not imagine what others feel knows no ills but his own. But when the first development of the senses lights the fire of imagination in him, he begins to feel himself in his fellows, to be touched by their cries and to suffer from their pains. It is then that the sorrowful picture of suffering humanity should bring to his heart the first feeling of tenderness he has ever experienced.
[792:] If this moment is not easy to notice in your children, whose fault is that? You taught them early on to play at feeling, you taught them its language so soon that speaking continually with the same tone they turn your lessons against you and give you no chance of discovering when they cease to lie and when they begin to feel what they say. But look at my Emile. At the age I have led him up to, he has neither felt nor lied. Before knowing what it is to love he has never said, "I love you very much." He has never been prescribed what expression to assume when he enters the room of his father, his mother, or his sick tutor; he has not been shown the art of affecting a sadness he does not feel. He has never pretended to weep for the death of any one, for he does not know what it is to die. There is the same insensibility in his heart as in his manners. Indifferent, like every child, to everything outside of himself, he takes no interest in any one; the only thing that distinguishes him is that he will not pretend to take such an interest and that he is not false like they are.
[793:] Having thought little about sensitive beings Emile will know late what suffering and dying are. Groans and cries will begin to stir his insides; the sight of blood flowing will make him turn away his eyes; the convulsions of a dying animal will cause him I know not what anguish, before he knows the source of these impulses. If he were still stupid and barbarous he would not have these sentiments; if he were more instructed he would recognize their source. He has compared ideas too frequently already to feel nothing but not enough to conceive of what he feels.
[794:] Thus pity is born, the first relative sentiment that touches the human heart according to the order of nature. To become sensitive and compassionate, the child must know that there are beings similar to him who suffer what he has suffered, who feel the pains he has felt; and others which he can form some idea of as being capable of feeling these things also. In effect, how can we let ourselves be stirred by pity unless we go beyond ourselves and identify ourselves with the suffering animal? By leaving, so to spunk, our own nature and taking his? We only suffer so far as we judge that he suffers; the suffering is not in us, it is in him that we suffer. So no one becomes sensitive till his imagination is aroused and begins to carry him outside himself.
[795:] To stimulate and nourish this growing sensibility, to guide it or to follow its natural bent, what should we do if not present to the young man objects on which the expansive force of his heart may take effect -- objects which dilate it, which extend it to other beings, which make him find himself outside of himself -- and carefully remove everything that narrows, concentrates, and strengthens the power of the human self? That is to say, in other words, to arouse in him goodness, humanity, compassion, beneficence -- all the engaging and gentle passions which are naturally pleasing to man -- and to prevent the the growth of envy, covetousness, hatred -- all the repulsive and cruel passions which make our sensibility not merely nul but a negative quantity and are the torment of those who experience them.
[796:] I think I can sum up all the preceding reflections in two or three definite, straightforward, and easy to understand maxims.First Maxim. -- It is not in human heart to put ourselves in the place of those who are happier than ourselves, but only in the place of those who are the most to be pitied.
[797:] If you find exceptions to this rule, they are more apparent than real. Thus we do not put ourselves in the place of the rich or great when we become fond of them; even when our affection is real, we only appropriate to ourselves a part of their welfare. Sometimes we love the rich man in the midst of misfortunes; but so long as he prospers he has no real friend except the man who is not deceived by appearances and who pities rather than envies him in spite of his prosperity.
[798:] We are touched by the happiness of certain conditions of life -- for instance, pastoral or country life. The charm of seeing these good people happy is not poisoned by envy; we are genuinely interested in them. Why is this? Because we feel we are able to descend into this state of peace and innocence and enjoy the same happiness; it is an alternative which only gives us pleasant thoughts so long as the wish is as good as the deed. There is always pleasure in seeing one's own resources, in contemplating one's own wealth, even when we do not mean to spend it.
[799:] From this it follows that that to incline a young man to humanity, instead of making him admire the brilliant fate of others you must show him the sad sides of things and make him fear them. Thus it becomes clear that he must mark out a route to happiness that does not follow the traces of anyone else.Second Maxim We never pity another's woes unless we know we may suffer in like manner ourselves." Non ignara mali, miseris succurrere disco." -- Virgil.
[800:] I know nothing so beautiful, so profound, so touching, so true as these lines.
[801:] Why have kings no pity for their subjects? Because they never expect to be men. Why are the rich so hard on the poor? Because they have no fear of becoming poor. Why do the nobles look down upon the people? Because a nobleman will never be a commoner. Why are the Turks generally kinder and more hospitable than ourselves? Because under their wholly arbitrary system of government, the rank and wealth of individuals are always precarious and vacillating, so that they do not regard poverty and degradation as conditions foreign to them
[Note 2]; to-morrow, any one may himself be in the same position as the one he assists is in today. This reflection, which occurs again and again in eastern romances, lends them a certain tenderness which is not to be found in our pretentious and harsh morality.
[802:] So do not accustom your pupil to look down from the height of his glory upon the sufferings of the unfortunate, the labors of the wretched; and do not hope to teach him to pity them as long as he considers them to be foreign to him. Make him clearly understand that the fate of these unhappy persons may one day be his own, that all their ills are just below him, that a thousand unforeseen and inevitable events could make him fall to their level in a moment. Teach him to put no trust in birth, health, or riches; show him all the vicissitudes of fortune; find him examples all too frequent of people who from a condition much higher than his own have fallen below the condition of these unhappy creatures -- whether by their own fault or not is not our question now. Does he indeed know the meaning of the word fault? Never interfere with the order of knowledge and only enlighten him through the means within his reach. He needs to be no great scholar to perceive that all the prudence of mankind cannot make certain whether he will be alive or dead in an hour's time, whether before nightfall he will not be grinding his teeth in the pangs of nephritis, whether a month from now he will be rich or poor, whether in a year's time he may not be rowing an Algerian galley under the lash of the slave-driver. Above all do not teach him this coldly, like a catechism; let him see and feel human calamities. Shake up and startle his imagination with the perils that continually surrounded every man; let him see the abysses all about him, and when he hears you speak of them, let him cling more closely to you for fear lest he should fall. "You will make him timid and cowardly," you say. We will soon see; as for the present let us begin by making him human; above all that is what is important to us.Third Maxim The pity that we have for the pain of others is not measured by the quantity of this pain but by the sentiment we have for those who suffer it.
[803:] We only pity a miserable person in so far as we think they feel the need of pity. The physical sentiment of our pains is more limited than one would suppose; it is memory that prolongs the pain, imagination which projects it into the future, that make us really to be pitied. This is, I think, one of the causes that makes us more callous to the pains of animals than to those of men, although a common sensibility ought to make us identify ourselves equally with them. We hardly pity the cart-horse in his shed, for we do not suppose that while he is eating his hay he is thinking of the blows he has received and the labors that await him. Neither do we pity the sheep grazing in the field, though we know it is about to be slaughtered, for we believe it knows nothing of its fate. Accordingly we also become hardened to the fate of men, and the rich console themselves for the harm they do to the poor by supposing them to be too stupid to feel anything. In general I judge of the value any one puts on the happiness of his fellow-beings by what he seems to think of them. It is natural to cheapen the happiness of the people one scorns. So do not be surprised that politicians speak of the people with so much scorn and that philosophes affect to make man so wicked.
[804:] It is the people who compose the human race; those who are not of the people are so few in number that they are not worth counting. Man is the same in every condition of life. If that be so, the most numerous condition merits the most respect. For the thinking person, all civil distinctions disappear; he sees the same passions, the same sentiments, in both the vagrant and the celebrity. There is merely a slight difference in speech and more or less artificiality of tone; and if there is any essential difference that distinguishes them, it is to the detriment of the moset dissembling. The people show themselves as they are, and they are not attractive; but the fashionable world is compelled to adopt a disguise. We would be horrified if we saw it as it really is.
[805:] There is, so our sages tell us, the same amount of happiness and sorrow in every condition. This saying is as destructive as it is untenable; for if everyone were equally happy why would I need to trouble myself for anyone? Let every one stay where he is; let the slave be ill-treated, the sick man suffer, and the wretched perish; they have nothing to gain by any change in their condition. People enumerate the sorrows of the rich, and show the inanity of their vain pleasures. What gross sophistry! The rich man's sufferings do not come from his condition, but from himself who alone abuses it. Even if he is more unhappy than the poor man, he is not to be pitied, for his ills are of his own making, and it depends only on him to make himself happy. But the sufferings of the poor man come from external things, from the hardness of the fate that weighs upon him. There are no good habits that can relieve him of the physical ills of fatigue, exhaustion, and hunger. Neither a good mind nor wisdom can serve in any way to free him from the pains of his condition. What did Epictetus gain by predicting that his master would break his leg? Did he not do it anyway? Beyond the pain itself he had the pain of foresight. If the people were as sensible as we assume them to be stupid, what could they be other than what they are, what could they do other than what they do do? Study the people in this condition; you will see that, with a different way of speaking, they have as much intelligence and more common-sense than you. Have respect then for your species; remember that it consists essentially of the whole of the people, collectively; that if all the kings and all the philosophes were removed they would scarcely be missed, and things would go on none the worse. In a word, teach your pupil to love all men, even those who scorn them; act in such way that he does not put himself in any class, but finds himself in all. Speak to him of the human race with tenderness, and even with pity, but never with scorn. Man, do not dishonor man.
[806:] It is by these ways and others like them-- very different from the beaten paths -- that we must enter the heart of the young adolescent in order to stimulate in him the first impulses of nature, to develop it and extend it to his fellow beings. To this I add that it is important to involve as little self-interest as possible in these impulses; above all, no vanity, no emulation, no boasting -- none of those sentiments which force us to compare ourselves with others. For such comparisons are never made without arousing some impression of hatred against those who dispute our preference, were it only in our own estimation. Then we would become either blind or angry, a bad man or a fool. Let us try to avoid this alternative. Sooner or later these dangerous passions will appear, I am told, in spite of us. I do not deny it. Each thing has its time and its place. I am only saying that we should not help to arouse these passions.
[807:] This is the spirit of the method to be laid down. Here examples and illustrations are useless, for here we find the beginning of the nearly infinite differences of character, and every example I gave would possibly apply to only one case in a hundred thousand. This is the age also that the clever teacher begins his real business as an observer and as a philosopher who knows the art of probing the heart while working to reform it. Since it does not occur to the young man to disguise himself, and since he has not even learned its meaning, you can see by his manner, in his eyes, in his gestures, the impression he has received from any object presented to him. You read in his face every impulse of his heart. By watching his expression you learn to foresee his impulses and eventually to control them.
[808:] It has been commonly observed that blood, wounds, cries and groans, the preparations for painful operations, and everything which directs the senses towards things connected with suffering, are usually the first to make an impression on all men. The idea of destruction, being more complex, does not strike one the same. The image of death affects us later and more feebly, for no one has had for himself the experience of dying; you must have seen corpses to feel the agonies of the dying. But when once this idea is well formed in our mind, there is no spectacle more horrible to our eyes, whether because of the idea of complete destruction which it arouses through our senses, or because knowing that this moment is inevitable for all men we feel ourselves more intensely affected by a situation from which we know there is no escape.
[809:] These various impressions differ in manner and in degree according to the particular character of each individual and his former habits, but they are universal and no one is completely free from them. There are other later and less general impressions which are suited to more sensitive souls. These are those that we receive from moral pains, inward suffering, the afflictions of the mind, depression, and sadness. There are men who can be touched by nothing but groans and tears; the suppressed sobs of a heart laboring under sorrow would never draw a even a sigh from them; the sight of a down-cast visage, a pale and gloomy countenance, eyes which can weep no longer, would never make them weep themselves. The pains of the soul are nothing to them: they are analysed, but their own mind feels nothing. From such persons expect only inflexible severity, harshness, cruelty. They may be upright and just, but never merciful, generous, or pitying. I say they could be just, if a man can indeed be just without being merciful.
[810:] But do not be in a hurry to judge young people by this standard, above all those who, having been educated the way they should be, have no idea of the moral sufferings they have never had to experience. For once again they can only pity the ills they know, and this apparent insensibility, which only comes from ignorance, is soon transformed into pity when they begin to feel that there are in human life a thousand ills of which they know nothing As for Emile, if he had simplicity and good sense in childhood, I am sure that he will have soul and sensitivity in his youth. For the truth of the sentiments depends to a great extent on the accuracy of the ideas.
[811:] But why bring him to this? More than one reader will reproach me no doubt for forgetting my first resolutions and the lasting happiness I promised my pupil. The sorrowful, the dying, such sights of pain and misery -- what happiness, what delight is this for a young heart on the threshold of life? His gloomy tutor, who proposed to give him such a kindly education, only give him life so that he may suffer? This is what they will say, but what difference does it make to me? I promised to make him happy, not to make him seem happy. Is it my fault if, always deceived by appearances, you take them for the reality?
[812:] Let us take two young men at the end of their primary education and entering the world by opposite doors. One climbs right away up to Mount Olympus and makes his way into the smartest society. He is presented at court, introduced to nobles, rich men, pretty women. I assume that he is entertained everywhere, and I will not examine the effect of this reception on his reason; I assume it can resist it. Pleasures fly before him, every day new objects amuse him; he flings himself into everything with an eagerness which carries you away. You find him attentive, eager, and curious; his first wonder makes a great impression on you; you think him happy; but look at the state of his heart; you think he is rejoicing, I think he suffers.
[813:] What does he see when first he opens his eyes? Multitudes of so-called pleasures which he did not know before and most of which, beingwithin his reach for only a moment only seem to come to him in order to make him regret being deprived of them. Is he walking through a palace? You see by his uneasy curiosity that he is asking why his father's house is not like it. Every question shows you that he is constantly comparing himself with the master of this house. And all the mortification arising from this comparison sharpens his vanity by revolting it. If he meets a young man better dressed than himself, I find him secretly complaining of his parents' stinginess. If he is better dressed than another, he suffers because the latter is his superior in birth or in intellect, and all his gold lace is put to shame by a plain cloth coat. If he shines unrivalled in some assembly, stands on tiptoe so that they may see him better, who is there who does not secretly desire to humble the pride and vanity of the young fop? Everybody soon unites as if in concert: the disquieting glances of a solemn man, the biting phrases of some satirical person, do not fail to reach him, and even if it were only one man who despised him, the scorn of that one would poison in a moment the applause of the rest.
[814:] Let us grant him everything. Let us not grudge him charm and worth; let him be well-built, full of wit, and attractive. He will be sought after by women; but by pursuing him before he is in love with them, they will inspire rage rather than love. He will have successes, but neither rapture nor passion to enjoy them. Since his desires are always anticipated they never have time to grow; in the midst of pleasures he only feels the tedium of restraint. Even before he knows it he is disgusted and satiated with the sex formed to be his own delight ; if he continues to seek it is only through vanity, and even should he really become attached, he will not be the only young, brilliant, attractive young man, nor will he always find his mistresses to be prodigies of fidelity.
[815:] I say nothing of the vexations, deceptions, crimes, and remorse of all kinds that are inseparable from such a life. Experience of the world makes one feel disgusted with it, as everyone knows. And I am speaking only of the drawbacks belonging to youthful illusions.
[816:] What a contrast for the one who, sheltered up until now in the bosom of his family and friends and seeing himself the sole object of their care, suddenly enters an order of things where he counts for so little and finds himself drowning in an unknown sphere, he who has been so long the center of his own! What insults, what humiliation, must he endure, before he loses among strangers the ideas of his own importance -- ideas that were formed and nourished among his own people! As a child everything gave way to him, everyone flocked to him; as a young man he must give place to every one, or if he preserves his former airs even a little, what harsh lessons will bring him to himself! The habit of obtaining the objects of his desires easily leads him to desire many things and makes him feel continual privations. Everything that flatters him tempts him; everything that others have he wants to have. He covets everything, he envies every one, he wants to dominate everywhere. He is devoured by vanity. The heat of unbridled desires inflames his young heart, including jealousy and hatred. All these violent passions burst out at once. He carries their agitations with him into the busy world, they return with him at night, he comes home dissatisfied with himself and others, he falls asleep full of a thousand vain projects, troubled by a thousand fantasies. And even in his dreams his pride pictures those fleeting goods which torment his desire and which he will never in his life possess. There is your pupil; now let us see mine.
[817:] If the first sight that strikes him is something sorrowful, his first return to himself is a feeling of pleasure. When he sees how many evils he has escaped he thinks he is happier than he thought he was. He shares the suffering of his fellow beings, but this sharing is voluntary and sweet. He enjoys at once the pity he feels for their ills and the joy of being exempt from them. He feels in himself that state of vigor which projects us beyond ourselves, and makes us transfer to others the superfluous activity of our well-being. To pity the ills of others we must indeed know them, but we need not feel them. When we have suffered or are in fear of suffering, we pity those who suffer; but when we suffer ourselves, we pity none but ourselves. But if all of us, being subject ourselves to the ills of life, only accord to others the sensibility we do not actually require for ourselves, it follows that pity must be a very pleasant feeling, since it disposes one to favor us; and, on the contrary, a hard-hearted man is always unhappy, since the state of his heart leaves him no superfluous sensibility that he can accord to the sufferings of others.
[818:] We judge happiness too much by appearances. We assume it to be where it is least likely to be; we seek for it where it cannot possibly be. Cheerfulness is a very uncertain sign of its presence. A cheerful man is often an unhappy person who is trying to deceive others and distract himself. Those men who are so jovial, so open, so agreeable at their club, are almost all depressed and grumbling at home, and their servants have to pay for the entertainment they provide for the company. True contentment is neither cheerful nor frivolous. Jealous of so sweet a sentiment, while tasting it we savor it; we fear it will evaporate. A really happy man says little and laughs little; he hugs his happiness, so to speak, to his heart. Noisy games, wild joy, conceal aversion and boredom. But melancholy is the companion of sensuality: tenderness and tears accompany our sweetest joys, and excessive joy itself brings forth tears rather than laughter.
[819:] If at first the number and variety of our amusements seem to contribute to our happiness, if at first the uniformity of a balanced life seems tedious, when we look at it more closely we find on the contrary that the sweetest habit of the soul consists in a moderate enjoyment, one that leaves little scope for desire and aversion. The restlessness of desire causes curiosity and fickleness; the emptiness of noisy pleasures causes boredom. We are never bored with our situation when we have no knowledge of a more pleasurable one. Of all the men in the world savages are the least curious and the least bored. Everything is indifferent to them. They get their pleasures not from things but from each other; they spend their life doing nothing and are never bored.
[820:] The man of the world lives entirely inside a mask. Almost never being in himself he is always a stranger and ill at ease when he is forced to come back to himself. What he is is nothing; what he seems is everything for him.
[821:] In the face of the young man I have just spoken of I cannot help picturing something impertinent, slick, and affected that is repulsive to people in general; and in the face of my own pupil a simple and interesting expression which indicates contentment, a true serenity of soul which inspires estime and confidence and seems only to await an outreach of friendship to extend his own confidence in return. It is thought that physiognomy is only the simple development of certain features already marked out by nature. For my part I think that over and above this development a man's facial features are unconsciously formed by the frequent and habitual influence of certain affections of the soul. These affections appear on the face, there is nothing more certain; and when they become habitual, they must surely leave lasting impressions. This is why I think the expression shows the character, and that we can sometimes judge one another without seeking mysterious explanations in knowledge we do not possess.
[822:] A child has only two distinct feelings, joy and sorrow; he laughs or he cries; there is nothing in between, and he is constantly passing from one extreme to the other. On account of these perpetual changes there is no lasting impression on the face, and no expression. But when the child is older and more sensitive he is more intensely or more constantly affected, and these deeper impressions leave traces more difficult to erase; and the habitual state of the feelings has an effect on the features which time makes ineffaceable. Still it is not rare to see men whose expression changes at different ages. I have met with several, and I have always found that those whom I could observe and follow had also changed their habitual passions. This one observation thoroughly confirmed would seem to me decisive, and it is not out of place in a treatise on education, where it is a matter of importance that we should learn to judge the feelings of the soul by external signs.
[823:] I do not know whether my young man will be any the less lovable for not having learnt to copy conventional manners and to feign sentiments which are not his own; that does not concern me at present. I only know he will be more loving; and I find it difficult to believe that one who cares for nobody but himself can so far disguise his true feelings as to please others as readily as the one who finds in his affection for others a new feeling of happiness for himself. But with regard to this feeling of happiness, I think I have said enough already for the guidance of any sensible reader, and to show that I have not contradicted myself.
[824:] I return to my system, and I say: when the critical age approaches, present to young people spectacles which restrain rather than excite them. Put off their dawning imagination with objects which, far from inflaming their senses, repress their activity. Keep them away from great cities, where the flaunting attire and immodesty of the women hasten and anticipate the lessons of nature, where everything presents to their view pleasures which they should know nothing of until they can choose them for themselves. Bring them back to their early home, where rural simplicity allows the passions of their age to develop less rapidly. Or if their taste for the arts keeps them in the city, guard them by means of this very taste from a dangerous idleness. Choose carefully their company, their occupations, and their pleasures; show them only touching but modest pictures that move them without seducing them, that nourish their sensibility without stimulating their senses. Remember also, that the danger of excess is not confined to any one place, and that immoderate passions always do unavoidable harm. You need not make your pupil a sick-nurse or a brother of charity, or afflict his sight with continual objects of pain and suffering or take him from one hospital to another, from the gallows to the prison. He must be softened, not hardened, by the sight of human misery. Endlessly confronted by the same sights over and over again, we no longer feel their impressions; habit accustoms us to everything. What one has seen too much of one no longer imagines; and it is only through the imagination that we can feel the sorrows of others. It is by seeing so much death and suffering that priests and doctors become pitiless. Let your pupil therefore know something of the fate of man and the miseries of his fellow-beings, but let him not see them too often. A single thing, carefully selected and shown on the right day, will give him a month of tender feelings and reflection. It is not so much what he has seen as his reaction to what he has seen that will determine the judgment he makes of it; and the lasting impression that he could get from an object comes less even from the object itself than from the point of view with which he is drawn to recall it. Thus by a careful use of examples, lessons, and images, you may dull the prick of the senses and delay nature even while following her own directions.
[825:] As he acquires enlightenment, choose the ideas that relate to it. As his desires take fire, select scenes able to quench them. An old veteran, distinguished by his manners as well as for his courage, once told me that in early youth his father, a sensible but extremely pious man, seeing that his son's growing sensibility was attracting him to women, tried in every way to restrain him. But at last when in spite of all his care his son was about to escape from his control, the father decided to take him to a hospital for syphilis victims, and, without any warning, made him go into a ward where a number of wretched creatures were expiating with a terrible treatment the disorder which had brought them into this plight. His senses revolted by such a hideous sight, the young man almost became sick. " Miserable lech," said his father vehemently, "go follow your vile tastes; you will soon be only too glad to be admitted to this ward, and as a victim to the most shameful sufferings, you will compel your father to thank God when you are dead."
[826:] These few words, together with the moving picture that had struck the young man, made an impression on him that could never be erased. Compelled by his profession to pass his youth in army barracks, he preferred to face all the jests of his comrades rather than to share their debauchery. " I have been a man," he said to me, "I have had my weaknesses, but even to the present day the sight of a prostitute inspires me with horror." Teacher, few discourses; but learn to choose the places, times and people; then give all your lessons by examples, and be sure of their effect.
[827:] The way childhood is spent is no great matter. The evil which may slip in is not irremediable, and the good which may be done might come later. But it is not so in in the first age in which man really begins to live. This age never lasts long enough for what there is to be done, and its importance demands unceasing attention; this is why I insist on the art of prolonging it. One of the best rules of good farming is to hold things back as much as possible. Make your progress slow and sure; prevent the adolescent from becoming a man until the moment when nothing remains for him to do to become one. While the body is growing the spirits destined to give vigor to the blood and strength to the muscles are in process of formation and elaboration. If you make them take another course and permit the strength which should have gone to the perfecting of one person to go to the making of another, both of them will remain in a state of weakness, and the work of nature will be imperfect. The workings of the mind, in their turn, are affected by this alteration, and the soul, as sickly as the body, functions languidly and feebly. Length and strength of limbs are not the same thing as courage or genius, and I grant that strength of mind does not always accompany strength of body, when the means of connection between the two are poorly ordered. But however well ordered they may be, they will always work feebly if for motive power they depend upon an exhausted, impoverished supply of blood, deprived of the substance which gives strength and elasticity to all the springs of the machinery. There is generally more vigor of soul to be found among men whose early years have been preserved from premature corruption than among those whose disorderly life has begun at the earliest opportunity; and this is no doubt one of the reasons why nations who have pure morals are generally superior in sense and courage to those who do not. The latter shine only through I know not what small and unimportant qualities, which they call wit, sagacity, cunning. But those great and noble features of wisdom and reason that distinguish and honor men by fine actions, by virtues, by really useful efforts, are scarcely to be found except among the nations whose morals are pure.
[828:] Teachers complain that the energy of this age makes their pupils unruly. I see that it is so, but are not they themselves at fault? When once they have let this energy flow through the channel of the senses, do they not realize that they cannot change its course? Will the long cold sermons of the pedant erase from the mind of his pupil the image of the pleasures he has known? Will they banish from his heart the desires that torment him? Will they chill the heat of a passion whose use he now knows? Will not the pupil be angered by the obstacles which stand in the way of the only kind of happiness of which he has any idea? And in the harsh law imposed upon him before he can understand it, will he see anything but the caprice and hatred of a man who is trying to torment him? Is it strange that he rebels and hates you in turn?
[829:] I know very well that if one is easy-going one may be tolerated, and one may maintain an apparent authority. But I fail to see the use of an authority over the pupil which is only maintained by fomenting the vices it ought to repress; it is like attempting to soothe a high-spirited horse by making it leap over a precipice.
[830:] Far from being an obstacle to education, this fire of adolescence is the means of its consummation and achievement. It is what gives you a hold on the young man's heart when he is no longer weaker than you. His first affections are the reins with which you direct his movements, He was free, and now I see him in your power. So long as he loved nothing, he only depended on himself and his own needs; as soon as he loves, he is dependent on his affections. Thus are formed the first ties that unite him to his species. When you direct his growing sensibility in this way, do not expect that it will at first include all men, and that the word "humankind" will have any meaning for him. No, this sensibility will at first be limited to those like himself, and these will not be people unknown to him but those with whom he has connections, those whom habit has made dear to him or necessary to him, those whom he sees having evidently the same manner of thinking and feeling as he does, those whom he sees exposed to the pains he has suffered and sensible to the pleasures he has enjoyed -- in a word, those in whom the identity of a more fully manifested nature gives a greater disposition to love themselves. It will only be after having cultivated his natural bent in a thousand ways, after many reflections on his own sentiments and on those he has observed in others that he will be able to arrive at generalizing his individual notions under the abstract idea of humanity and join to his own particular affections those that can identify him with his species.
[831:] When he becomes capable of affection, he becomes aware of the affection,
[Note 3] and he is on the lookout for the signs of that affection. Do you not see what a new hold you are going to acquire over him? What chains have you bound about his heart before he even sees them! What will he feel, when turning his eyes upon himself he sees what you have done for him; when he can compare himself with other young people of his age, and other tutors with you? I say, "When he sees it," but be careful not to tell him of it; if you tell him he will not see it. If you claim his obedience in return for the care you have given him, he will think that you have preempted him. He will see that while you profess to have cared for him without reward, you meant to saddle him with a debt and to bind him to a bargain which he never made. In vain you will add that what you demand is for his own good; still you are demand it, and you are demanding it by virtue of what you have done without his consent. When a man down on his luck accepts money from a stranger, and finds he has enlisted in the army without knowing it, you protest against the injustice. Is it not still more unjust to demand from your pupil the price of care which he has not even accepted?of others
[832:] Ingratitude would he rarer if kindness were less often the investment of a usurer. We love those who have done us a kindness; it is such a natural sentiment! Ingratitude is not to be found in the heart of man, but self-interest is there. There are fewer ungrateful beneficiaries than self-interested benefactors. If you sell me your gifts, I will haggle over the price; but if you pretend to give, in order to sell later on at your own price, you are guilty of fraud. It is the free gift which is beyond price. The heart is a law to itself; in wishing to bind it you lose it. By holding on to it one lets it free.
[833:] When the fisherman baits his line, the fish come round him without suspicion; but when they are caught on the hook concealed in the bait, they feel the line tighten and try to escape. Is the fisherman a benefactor? Is the fish ungrateful? Do we ever see a man forgotten by his benefactor forgetting him? On the contrary, he speaks about him with pleasure, he thinks of him only with tenderness. If he gets a chance of showing him by some unexpected service that he remembers what he did for him, how delighted he is to satisfy his gratitude! With what sweet joy he makes himself known to him! How delighted he is to say, "It is my turn now." This is truly the voice of nature; never did a true favor cause ingratitude.
[834:] If therefore recognition is a natural feeling, and you do not destroy its effects by your own fault, you may be sure that your pupil, as he begins to understand the value of your efforts, will be grateful for them provided you have not put a price upon them, and that they will give you an authority over his heart which nothing can overthrow. But before being assured of this advantage, be careful not to lose it by valuing yourself too much in front of him. Boast of your services and they will become intolerable; forget them and they will not be forgotten. Until the time comes to treat him as a man let it not be a question of what he owes you but what he owes to himself. To make him docile, let him have his liberty; hide yourself so that he may seek you; raise his soul to the noble sentiment of gratitude by on]y speaking of his own interest. I would not have him told that what was done was for his good before he was able to understand. In such a speech he would only see that your dependence on him and he would merely take you as his valet. But now that he is beginning to feel what it is to love, he also knows what a sweet tie may unite a man to what he loves; and in the zeal which keeps you constantly occupied with him, he now sees not the bonds of a slave but the affection of a friend. Indeed there is nothing which carries so much weight with the human heart as the voice of friendship recognized as such, for we know that it never speaks but for our good. We may think our friend is mistaken, but never that he wants to deceive us. Sometimes we may resist his advice, but we never scorn it.
[835:] We finally enter the moral order; we have just taken the second step towards manhood. If this were the place for it, I would try to show how from the first movements of the heart arise the first voices of conscience, and how from the sentiments of love and hatred spring the first notions of good and evil. I would show that justice and goodness are not merely abstract words, not pure moral beings formed by the understanding, but true affections of the heart enlightened by reason, and are only the natural outcome of our primitive affections; that by reason alone, independent of conscience, we cannot establish any natural law; and that all of natural right is merely a dream if it is not founded on a natural need of the human heart
[Note 4]. But at this point I believe there is no need to make treatises on metaphysics and morals, nor courses of study of any kind. It is enough to indicate the order and progress of our sentiments and of our knowledge in relation to our constitution. Others will perhaps work out what I have only indicated here.
[836:] Having until now only regarded himself, the first regard that my Emile will cast on his fellow beings will cause him to compare himself with them; and the first sentiment that this comparison will stimulate in him is the desire to be first. Here is the point when amour de soi changes into amour-propre, and when all the passions that derive from it begin to be born. But to determine whether the passions which dominate his character will be humane and gentle or cruel and malicious, whether they shall be the passions of benevolence and compassion or those of envy and covetousness, we must know what he believes his place among men to be, and what sort of obstacles he expects to have to overcome in order to arrive at the place he would like to occupy.
[837:] To guide him in this inquiry, after we have shown him men by means of the accidents common to the species, it is necessary now to show him them by means of their differences. Now comes the assessment of natural and civil inequality and a picture of the whole social order.
[838:] One must study society by men and men by society. Those who desire to treat politics and morals separately will never understand anything of either of them. By focusing first on one's earliest relations, we see how men should be influenced by them and what passions should spring from them. We see that it is in proportion to the development of these passions that a man's relations with others expand or contract. It is less the strength of arms as moderation of spirit that makes men free and independent. Whoever desires few things is dependent on few men; but confusing always our vain desires with our physical needs, those who have made these needs the basis of human society are continually mistaking effects for causes, and they have only become lost in their own reasoning.
[839:] There is in the state of nature a real and indestructible de facto equality because it is impossible in this state that any single difference between man and man would be great enough to make one person dependent on another. There is in the civil state a vain and imaginary de jure equality because the means aimed at maintaining it themselves serve to destroy it -- and because in order to oppress the weak the public force, together with the force of the strongest, breaks the kind of equilibrium that nature put between them.
[Note 5] From this first contradiction flow all the others noticed in the civil order between appearance and reality. Always the many will be sacrificed to the few, the public interest to the particular interest. Always those specious words of justice and subordination will serve as instruments of violence and the weapons of inequity. Hence it follows that the upper classes which claim to be useful to the rest are really only useful to themselves at the expense of others. From this we should judge how much consideration is due to them according to justice and according to reason. It remains to be seen whether the rank that these people have given themselves is favorable to those who hold it or not for us to know what opinion each one of us should bring with regard to his own fate. This is the study with which we are now concerned; but to do it well we must begin by knowing the human heart.
[840:] If it were only a question of showing young people man with his mask on there would be no need of showing, since he would always be before their eyes. But because the mask is not the man, and because they must not he seduced by surface qualities, when you depict men for your pupil, depict them as they are -- not that he may hate them, but that he may pity them and have no wish to he like them. This is, in my opinion, the most reasonable sentiment a man can hold with regard to his species.
[841:] With this object in view we must take the opposite route from that followed up until now and instruct the youth through the experience of others rather than through his own. If men deceive him he will hate them; but if, while respected by him, he sees them deceiving each other, he will pity them. "The spectacle of the world," said Pythagoras, "is like the Olympic games. Some treat it as a boutique and think only of their profits; others pay with their body and seek out glory; others are happy to be watching the games, and this last category is not the worst."
[842:] I would have you so choose the company of a youth that he should think well of those who live with him, and I would have you so teach him to know the world that he should think ill of all that takes place in it. Let him know that man is naturally good; let him feel it, let him judge his neighbor by himself. But let him see how society corrupts and perverts men; let him find in their prejudices the source of all their vices; let him be moved to respect the individual, but to despise the multitude; let him see that all men wear nearly the same mask, but let him also know that there are faces more beautiful than the mask that conceals them.
[843:] This method, it must be admitted, has its inconveniences and is not easy to put into practice. For if he becomes observant too soon, if you accustom him to spying too closely on the actions of others, you will make him spiteful and satirical, assertive and quick to judge others. He will take an odious pleasure in seeking out all kinds of sinister interpretations and will fail to see the good even in that which is really good. He will at the very least get used to the spectacle of vice and to seeing bad people without horror, just as we get used to seeing the poor without pity. Soon general perversity will serve less as a lesson than as an example. He will say to himself that if man is thus, he himself does not want to be otherwise.
[844:] So if you wish to teach him by principles and make him know together with the nature of the human heart how external causes turn our inclinations into vices, by trying to lead him immediately from sense objects to intellectual objects you will be using a metaphysics that he is not in a position to understand. You will be falling back into the problem, so carefully avoided until now, of giving him lessons that ressemble lessons, of substituting in his mind the experience and the authority of the master for his own experience and the development of his own reason.
[845:] To remove these two obstacles at once and to bring the human heart within his reach without risk of spoiling his own, I would show him men from afar, in other times or in other places, so that he may see the scene without ever being able to act in it. This is the moment for history. With its help he will read the hearts of men without any lessons in philosophy; with its help he will view them as a mere spectator without self-interest and without passion, as their judge not as their accomplice or their accuser.
[846:] To know men you must see them act. In society we hear them talk; they show their discourse and hide their deeds. But in history these actions are unveiled, and they are judged by the facts. Their sayings even help us to understand them. For by comparing what they say and what they do, we see both what they are and what they would like to appear to be. The more they disguise themselves the better one knows them.
[847:] Unluckily this study has its dangers, its inconveniences of more than one kind. It is difficult to adopt a point of view that will enable one to judge one's fellow-beings with equity. One of the great vices of history is that it depicts many more men by their bad sides than by their good sides. Since it is only interesting because of revolutions and catastrophes, so long as a nation grows and prospers quietly in the tranquility of a peaceful government, history says nothing. It only begins to take note when, no longer able to be self-sufficient, nations interfere with the affairs of their neighbors or allow their neighbors to interfere with them. History only makes them famous when they are on in decline. All our histories begin where they ought to end. We have very exact histories of nations that destroy themselves; what we lack is the history of those nations which are multiplying. They are so happy and so wise that history has nothing to tell us of them; and we see indeed in our own times that the governments that conduct themselves the best are least talked of. We thus only know what is bad; the good is scarcely mentioned. Only the wicked become famous, the good are forgotten or turned to ridicule; and thus history, like philosophy, is forever slandering mankind.
[848:] Moreover, it is inevitable that the facts described in history do not give an exact picture of the same facts such as they happened. They are transformed in the head of the historian; they are molded by his interests and colored by his prejudices. Who is it who can can place the reader exactly in a position to see the event as it really happened? Ignorance or partiality disguise everything. Without even altering an historical incident, by expanding or contracting the circumstances that relate to it, how many different faces one can give it! Put a single object in diverse points of view and it will hardly appear the same; and yet nothing will have changed but the eye of the spectator. Do you indeed do honour to truth when what you tell me is a genuine fact, but you make it appear something quite different? How many times has one tree more or less, a rock to the right or to the left, a cloud of dust raised by the wind, decided the outcome of a battle without any one knowing it? Does that prevent the historian from telling you the cause of defeat or victory with as much assurance as if he had been there? But of what importance are facts in themselves when the reason for them remains unknown to me, and what lessons can I draw from an event whose true cause is unknown to me? The historian gives me one, but he invents it; and criticism itself, of which we hear so much, is only the art of conjecture, the art of choosing from among several lies the one that best ressembles the truth.
[849:] Have you ever read Cleopatra or Cassandra or any books of the kind? The author selects a well-known event, then by adapting it to his own views, adorning it with details of his own invention, with people who never existed, and with with imaginary portraits, he piles fiction on fiction to make the reading fun. I see little difference between such romances and your histories unless it is that the novelist draws more on his own imagination while the historian slavishly makes use of that of others. To this I would add, if I may, that the novelist has some moral purpose good or bad, about which the historian scarcely concerns himself.
[850:] You will tell me that accuracy in history is of less interest than a true picture of men and manners. Provided the human heart is truly portrayed, it matters little that events should be accurately recorded. For after all, you say, what does it matter to us what happened two thousand years ago? You are right if the portraits are indeed truly rendered according to nature. But if most of them only have their model in the historian's imagination, are you not falling into the very problem you wanted to avoid, and surrendering to the authority of the historian what you would not yield to the authority of the teacher? If my pupil is merely to see fantasy pictures, I would rather draw them myself. They will, at least, be better suited to him.
[851:] The worst historians for a youth are those who make judgments. Let us have facts and let him judge for himself. This is how he will learn to know men. If the judgement of the author ceaselessly guides him, he will only be made to see with the eye of another, and when he lacks this eye he will no longer see anything.
[852:] I leave modern history on one side, not only because it has no character and all our men ressemble each other, but because our historians, wholly taken up with their own brilliance, think of nothing but highly colored portraits, which often represent nothing.
[Note 6] The old historians generally give fewer portraits and bring more intelligence and common-sense to their judgments. But even among them there is a large choice to make, and you must not begin with the wisest but with the simplest. I would not put Polybius or Sallust into the hands of a youth. Tacitus is the author of old men, young men cannot understand him. You must learn to see in human actions the most primitive traits of the human heart before wanting to sound its depths. You must be able to read facts clearly before you begin to study maxims. Philosophy in the form of maxims is only fit for the experienced. Youth should never generalize anything; all its instruction should be in particular rules.
[853:] Thucydides is in my view the true model of historians. He reports facts without judging them; but he omits no circumstance that would enable us to judge for ourselves. He puts everything that he relates before his reader. Far from inserting himself between the facts and the readers, he conceals himself; we seem not to read but to see. Unfortunately he speaks always of war, and in his stories we only see the least instructive thing in the world, that is to say battles. The Retreat of the Ten Thousand and the Commentaries of Caesar have almost the same virtues and defects. The kindly Herodotus, without portraits, without maxims, yet flowing, simple, full of details calculated to delight and interest in the highest degree, would perhaps be the best historian if these very details did not often degenerate into childish simplicities, better adapted to spoil the taste of youth than to form it. We need discretion before we can read him. I say nothing of Livy; his turn will come, but he is a politician, a rhetorician, he is everything that is unsuitable for this age.
[854:] History in general is lacking in that it only registers striking and clearly marked facts that may be fixed by names, places, and dates. But the slow evolution of these facts, which cannot be definitely noted in this way, still remains unknown. We often find in some battle lost or won the reason for a revolution that was inevitable before this battle took place. War only makes manifest events already determined by moral causes that historians rarely know how to see.
[855:] The philosophic spirit has turned the thoughts of many of the writers of our times in this direction; but I doubt whether truth has profited from their labors. The rage for systems having takin hold of them all, no one seeks to see things as they are but only as they agree with his system.
[856:] Add to all these considerations the fact that history shows us many more actions than men because it only seizes men at certain chosen times in full dress; it only portrays public man who arranges himself in order to be seen. History does not follow him to his home, to his study, among his family and his friends; it only shows depicts him when he represents something; it is his clothes rather than himself that it describes.
[857:] I would prefer to begin the study of the human heart with reading the lives of individuals. For then even when the man tries to hide himself the historian follows him everywhere; he never leaves him a moment's relief nor any corner where he can escape the piercing eye of the spectator. And it is when he thinks he is concealing himself best that the writer makes him best known. "Those who write lives," says Montaigne, "in so far as they delight more in ideas than in events, more in that which comes from within than in that which comes from without, these are the writers I prefer; that is why Plutarch is the man for me."
[858:] It is true that the genius of men in groups or nations is very different from the character of the individual man, and that we have a very imperfect knowledge of the human heart if we do not also examine it in crowds. But it is none the less true that one must begin studying man in order to judge men, and that he who knew perfectly the inclinations of each individual could foresee all their combined effects in the body of the people.
[859:] We must go back again to the ancients for the reasons already stated, and also because all the details common and familiar, but true and characteristic, being banished by the modern style, men are dressed up by our modern authors as much in their private life as in the public world. Decency, no less strict in writing than in life, no longer permits us to say anything in public that we are not permitted to do in public; and since we can only show the man as representating something, we can know them no better from our books than we can from our theaters. The lives of kings may be written a hundred times in vain; we shall never have another Suetonius.
[Note 7]
[860:] The excellence of Plutarch consists in those very details that we are no longer permitted to describe. With inimitable grace he paints the great man in little things; and he is so fortunate in the choice of his traits that a word, a smile, a gesture, will often suffice to characterize his hero. With a jest Hannibal cheers his frightened soldiers and leads them laughing to the battle which conquers Italy; Agesilaus riding on a stick makes me love the conqueror of the great king; Caesar passing through a poor village and chatting with his friends unconsciously betrays the traitor who professed that he only wished to be Pompey's equal. Alexander swallows his medecine without a word -- it is the finest moment in his life; Aristides writes his own name on the shell and so justifies his title; Philopoemen, his mantle laid aside, chops firewood in the kitchen of his host. This is the true art of portraiture. Physiognomy does not show itself in large traits, nor character in grand actions; it is the small things that reveal what is natural. Public events are either too common or too artificial, and yet it is almost exclusively on them that today's authors, out of pride, are focused.
[861:] M. de Turenne was undoubtedly one of the greatest men of the last century. They have had the courage to make his life interesting by the little details which make us know and love him; but how many details have they felt obliged to omit that might have made us know and love him even more? I will only quote one which I have on good authority, one which Plutarch would never have omitted, but one which Ramsai would not have taken care to write if he had known it.
[862:] On a hot summer's day Viscount Turenne was standing near the window of his antichamber in a little white vest and nightcap. One of his men came up and, misled by the dress, took him for one of the kitchen boys whom he knew. He crept up behind him and not at all lightly gave him a great smack on the behind. The man he struck turned around immediately. The valet saw it was his master and trembled at the sight of his face. He fell on his knees in desperation. "Sir, I thought it was George." "Well, even if it was George," exclaimed Turenne rubbing the injured part, "you need not have struck so hard." You do not dare to say this, you miserable writers! Remain for ever without humanity and without feeling; steel your hard hearts in your vile propriety, make yourselves contemptible through your high-mindedness. But as for you, dear youth, when you read this anecdote, when you are touched by all the kindliness displayed even on the impulse of the moment, read also the meanness of this great man when it was a question of his name and birth. Remember it was this very Turenne who always professed to yield precedence to his nephew so that all men might see that this child was the head of a royal house. Look on this picture and on that one; love nature, despise popular prejudice, and know the man as he was.
[863:] There are few people able to realize what an effect such reading, carefully directed, will have upon the unspoiled mind of a youth. Weighed down by books from our earliest childhood, accustomed to read without thinking, what we read strikes us even less because we already carry in ourselves the passions and prejudices with which history and the lives of men are filled. All that they do strikes us as only natural, for we ourselves are unnatural and we judge others by ourselves. But let us represent a young man raised according to my maxims. Imagine my Emile, who has been carefully guarded for eighteen years with the sole object of preserving a right judgment and a healthy heart; imagine him when the curtain goes up casting his eyes for the first time upon the world's stage; or rather picture him behind the scenes watching the actors don their costumes and counting the cords and pulleys whose gross prestige deceives the eyes of the spectators. His first surprise will soon give way to feelings of shame and scorn for his species; he will be indignant at the sight of the whole human race duping itself and stooping to this childish play. He will grieve to see his brothers tearing each other apart for a mere dream and transforming themselves into ferocious beasts because they could not be content to be men.
[864:] Given the natural disposition of the pupil, as little as the teacher may bring of prudence and of choice in his readings, as little as he puts the pupil on the path towards the reflections that he ought to draw from them, this exercise will be for him a course in practical philosophy, surely better and more clearly understood than all the vain speculations with which we muddle the minds of our young people in our schools. After hearing about the romantic plans of Pyrrhus, Cineas asks him what real good the conquest of the world would gain him that he couldn not enjoy in the present without such great sufferings. This only arouses in us a passing interest as a smart saying. But Emile will think it a very wise thought, one which had already occurred to himself, and one which he will never forget because there is no hostile prejudice in his mind to prevent it sinking in. When he reads more of the life of this madman, he will find that all his great plans resulted in his death at the hands of a woman, and instead of admiring this pretended heroism, what will he see in the exploits of this great captain and the schemes of this great statesman but so many steps towards that unlucky tile which was to bring life and schemes alike to a shameful death?
[865:] All conquerors have not been killed; all usurpers have not failed in their plans. To minds imbued with vulgar prejudices many of them will seem happy. But he who looks below the surface and reckons men's happiness by the condition of their hearts will perceive their wretchedness even in the midst of their successes. He will see them panting after advancement and never attaining their prize; he will find them like those inexperienced travelers among the Alps, who think that every height they see is the last, who reach its summit only to find to their disappointment there are loftier peaks beyond.
[866:] Augustus, when he had subdued his fellow-citizens and destroyed his rivals, reigned for forty years over the greatest empire that ever existed. But all this vast power could not hinder him from beating his head against the walls and filling his palace with his groans as he cried to Varus to restore his slaughtered legions. If he had conquered all his foes what good would his empty triumphs have done him, when troubles of every kind beset his path, when his life was threatened by his dearest friends, and when he had to mourn the disgrace or death of all near and dear to him? The wretched man desired to rule the world and failed to rule his own household. What was the result of this neglect? He beheld his nephew, his adopted child, his son-in-law, perish in the flower of youth and his grandson reduced to eat the stuffing of his mattress to prolong his wretched existence for a few hours. His daughter and his grand-daughter, after they had covered him with infamy, both died -- one of hunger and want on a desert island, the other in prison by the hand of a common archer. He himself, the last survivor of his unhappy house, found himself compelled by his own wife to acknowledge a monster as his heir. Such was the fate of the master of the world, so famous for his glory and his good fortune. I cannot believe that any one of those who admire his glory and fortune would accept them at the same price.
[867:] I have taken ambition as my example, but the play of every human passion offers similar lessons to any one who will study history to make himself wise and good at the expense of those who are now dead. The time is drawing near when the teaching of the life of Antony will appeal more forcibly to the youth than the life of Augustus. Emile will scarcely know where he is among the many strange sights in his new studies; but he will know beforehand how to avoid the illusion of passions before they arise, and seeing how in all ages they have blinded men's eyes, he will be forewarned of the way in which they may one day blind his own should he abandon himself to them. These lessons, I know, are difficult to adapt to him; perhaps when needed they may be too late and insufficient. But remember they are not the lessons I wished to draw from this study. By beginning it I had another aim; and surely, if this purpose is unfulfilled, the teacher is to blame.
[868:] Remember that as soon as amour-propre has developed the relative self is ceaselessly put into play, and the young man never observes others without coming back to himself and comparing himself with them. It is therefore a question of knowing what ranking he will give himself among his peers after having examined them. I see from the manner in which young men are taught to study history that they are transformed, so to speak, into the people they see, that you strive to make them become a Cicero, a Trajan, or an Alexander of them in order to dishearten them when they return to themselves, to make each of them regret that he is merely himself. There are certain advantages in this plan which I do not deny; but, so far as Emile is concerned, if it happens at any time when he is making these comparisons that he wishes to be any one but himself--were it Socrates or Cato -- all is lost. He who begins to regard himself as a stranger will soon forget himself altogether.
[869:] It is not philosophers who know most about men. They only view them through the prejudices of philosophy, and I know no one so prejudiced as philosophers. A savage would judge us more sanely than a philosopher. The philosopher is aware of his own vices, he is indignant at ours, and he says to himself, "We are all evil." The savage looks at us without being moved and says, "You are mad." He is right, for no one does evil for evil's sake. My pupil is that savage, with this difference: Emile has thought more, he has compared ideas, seen our errors from up close, he is more on his guard against himself, and only judges of what he knows.
[870:] It is our own passions that set us against the passions of others; it is our self-interest that makes us hate the wicked. If they did us no harm we would feel more pity for them than hate. The harm that they do to us makes us forget what they do to themselves. We would readily forgive their vices if we could perceive how their own heart punishes those vices. We feel the offence, but we do not see the punishment; the advantages are plain, the penalty is hidden. He who thinks he is enjoying the fruits of his vices is no less tormented by them than if they had not been successful; the object is different, the anxiety is the same. In vain he displays his good fortune and hides his heart. In spite of them his conduct betrays him. But to see this, our own heart must not ressemble his.
[871:] The passions that we share seduce us, those that challenge our self-interest revolt us, and with a lack of logic due to these very passions we blame in others what we would like to imitate. Aversion and illusion are inevitable when we are forced to endure at another's hands what we ourselves would do in his place.
[872:] What then is necessary in order to observe men well? A great interest in knowing them, a great impartiality of judging them, a heart sensitive enough to conceive of every human passion and calm enough not to experience them. If there is any time in our life a favorable moment for this study, it is this one that I have chosen for Emile. Before now men would have been strangers to him; later on he would have been like them. Opinion, the effects of which he already perceives, has not yet acquired an empire over him; the passions, whose consequences he realizes, have not yet agitated his heart. He is a man. He takes an interest in his brothers; he is equitable and he judges his peers. Now it is certain that if he judges them rightly he will not want to be in the position of any one of them. For the goal of all the torments they give themselves being based on prejudices that he does not share, such a goal seems to him a mere dream. For him, everything he wants is within his reach. How should he be dependent on any one when he is self-sufficent and free of prejudice? He has strong arms, good health,
[Note 8] moderation, few needs, and the means to satisfy those needs. Brought up in the most absolute liberty, the greatest wrong he can conceive of is servitude. He pities those miserable kings who are the slaves of all who obey them; he pities those false prophets fettered by their empty fame; he pities those rich fools, martyrs to their own pomp; he pities those ostentatious voluptuaries, who spend their entire life in boredom so that they may appear to have its pleasures. He would pity the enemy who harmed him, for in his wrongdoing he would see his misery. He would say to himself, ""By giving himself the need to hurt me, this man has made his fate dependent on mine."
[873:] One step more and we reach our goal. Amour-propre is a useful tool though a dangerous one. It often wounds the hand that uses it, and it rarely does good without doing evil. When Emile considers his place among men, when he finds himself so fortunately situated, he will he tempted to give credit to his own reason for the work of yours, and to attribute to his own merits the effects of his happiness. He will say to himself, "I am wise and other men are fools." By pitying them he will despise them, by congratulating himself he will estime himself all the more, and by feeling himself happier than they, he will believe himself more worthy of being so. This is the fault we have most to fear, for it is the most difficult to eradicate. If he remained in this state of mind, he would have profited little by all our care; and if I had to choose, I hardly know whether I would not rather choose the illusions of prejudice than those of pride.
[874:] Great men are under no illusion with respect to their superiority. They see it and know it, but they are none the less modest. The more they have, the better they know what they lack. They are less vain about their superiority over us than ashamed by the consciousness of their weakness; and among the good things they really possess they are too wise to pride themselves on a gift which is none of their getting. The good man may be proud of his virtue for it is his own, but what cause for pride has the man of intellect? What has Racine done that he is not Pradon, and Boileau that he is not Cotin?
[875:] Here it is something very different. Let us remain in the common order. I assumed that my pupil had neither transcendent genius nor a limited understanding. I chose him of an ordinary mind to show what education could do for man. Exceptions defy all rules. If, therefore, as a result of my care, Emile prefers his way of living, seeing, and feeling to that of others, he is right; but if he thinks because of this that he is nobler and better born than they, he is wrong; he is deceiving himself. He must he undeceived, or rather let us prevent the mistake, lest it be too late to correct it
[876:] Provided a man is not mad, he can be cured of any folly but vanity. There is no cure for this but experience, if indeed there is any cure for it at all. When it first appears we can at least prevent its further growth. But do not therefore waste your breath on empty arguments to prove to the adolescent that he is like other men and subject to the same weaknesses. Make him feel it or he will never know it. This is another instance of an exception to my own rules. I must voluntarily expose my pupil to every accident which may convince him that he is no wiser than we. The adventure with the magician will he repeated again and again in different ways. I shall let flatterers take advantage of him; if some daredevils draw him into a perilous adventure, I will let him run the risk; if he falls into the hands of gamblers at a card-table, I will abandon him to them to make as their dupe.
[Note 9]I will let them flatter him, pluck him, and rob him; and when having sucked him dry they turn and mock him, I will even thank them to his face for the lessons they have been good enough to give him. The only snares from which I will guard him with my utmost care are the wiles of courtesans. The only precaution I shall take will be to share all the dangers I let him run, and all the insults I let him receive. I will bear everything in silence, without a murmur or reproach, without a word to him, and be sure that if this wise conduct is faithful]y adhered to, what he sees me endure on his account will make more impression on his heart than what he suffers himself.
[877:] Here I cannot prevent myself from mentioning the false dignity of tutors who, in order to play at being wise, discourage their pupils by affecting to treat them as children and by emphasizing the difference between themselves and their scholars in everything they do. Far from damping their youthful spirits in this fashion, you should spare no effort to elevate their soul. Make them your equals so that they may become so, and if they cannot rise to your level, come down to theirs without shame or scruple. Remember that your honour is no longer in yourself but in your pupil. Share his faults in order to correct them, bear his shame in order to erase it. Imitate that brave Roman who seeing his army flee and being unable to rally them, placed himself at their head, exclaiming, " They do not flee, they follow their captain!" Did this dishonor him? Not so. By sacrificing his glory he increased it. The power of duty, the beauty of virtue, compel our respect in spite of all our foolish prejudices. If I received a blow while fulfilling my duties to Emile, far from avenging it I would boast of it; and I doubt whether there is in the world a man so vile as to not respect me more for it.
[878:] It is not that the pupil should suppose his master to have as limited an understanding as his own or to be as liable to be seduced. This idea is all very well for a child who can neither see nor compare things, who thinks everything is within his reach, and only puts his confidence only in those who know how to come down to his level. But a young man of Emile's age and as sensible as he is is no longer so stupid as to make this mistake, and it would not be desirable that he should. The confidence he ought to have in his tutor is of another kind. It should rest on the authority of reason and on superior understanding, on the advantages that the young man is capable of appreciating while he perceives how useful they are to himself. Long experience has convinced him that he is loved by, that this tutor is a wise and good man who desires his happiness and knows how to procure it. He ought to know that it is to his own advantage to listen to his advice. But if the master lets himself be taken in like the disciple, he will lose his right to expect deference from him and to give him instruction. Still less should the pupil suppose that his master is purposely letting him fall into traps or preparing pitfalls for his inexperience. How can we avoid these two difficulties? Choose the best and most natural means; be simple and true like him; warn him of the perils to which he is exposed, show them to him clearly and sensibly but without exaggeration, without ill humor, without pedantic display, and above all without giving your opinions in the form of orders until they have become such and until this imperious tone is absolutely necessary. And if he is still obstinate after this, as he often will be? Then say nothing more to him, leave him in liberty, follow him, imitate him, cheerfully and frankly. Let yourself go, have as much fun as him if this is possible. If the consequences become too serious, you are always there to prevent them. And yet when this young man has witnessed your foresight and your kindliness, will he not be at once struck by the one and touched by the other? All his faults are but so many bands with which he himself provides you to restrain him when needed. Now what makes for the greatest art of the teacher consists in controlling circumstances and directing his exhortations so that he may know beforehand when the young man will give in and when he will refuse to do so, in order to surround him with the lessons of experience, and yet never expose him to to grade dangers.
[879:] Warn him of his faults before he commits them; do not blame him when once they are committed; you would only stir his self-love to mutiny. We learn nothing from a lesson we detest. I know nothing more foolish than the phrase, "I told you so." The best way to make him remember what you told him is to seem to have forgotten it. Go further than this, and when you find him ashamed of having refused to believe you, gently smooth away the humiliation with kind words. He will surely feel affection when he sees how you forget yourself for his sake and that in stead of putting him down you console him. But if to his chagrin you add your reproaches, he will hate you, and will make it a rule never to listen to you, as if to prove that he does not agree with you as to the value of your opinion.
[880:] The turn you give to your consolation may itself be a lesson to him, all the more useful because he does not suspect it. When you tell him, for example, that a thousand other people have made the same mistakes, this is not what he was expecting. You are correcting him by only seeming to pity him. For when one thinks oneself better than other people it is a very mortifying excuse to console oneself by their example. It means that we must realize that the most we can say is that they are no better than we.
[881:] The time of faults is the time for fables. When we blame the guilty under the cover of a story we instruct without offending him; and he then understands that the story is not untrue by means of the truth he finds in its application to himself. The child who has never been deceived by flattery understands nothing of the fable I recently examined; but the rash youth who has just become the dupe of a flatterer perceives only too readily that the crow was a fool. Thus he acquires a maxim from the fact, and the experience he would soon have forgotten is engraved on his mind by means of the fable. There is no knowledge of morals which cannot be acquired through our own experience or that of others. When there is danger, instead of letting him try the experiment himself, we have recourse to history. When the risk is comparatively slight, it is just as well that the young man should be exposed to it. Then by means of the apologue one can transpose into maxims the special cases with which the young man is now acquainted.
[882:] I do not mean, however, that these maxims should be explained, nor even formulated. Nothing is so foolish and unwise as the moral at the end of most of the fables -- as if the moral was not, or ought not to be so clear in the fable itself that the reader cannot fail to perceive it. Why then add the moral at the end, and so deprive him of the pleasure of discovering it for himself. The art of teaching consists in making the pupil enjoy learning. But in order to enjoy it, his mind must not remain so passive to everything you tell him that he has nothing for him to do in order to understand you. The teacher's amour-propre must always leave some space for the pupil's; he must be able to say, I understand, I see it, I am getting at it, I am instructing myself. One of the things which makes the Patontaloon in the Italian comedies so wearisome is the pains taken by him to explain to the audience the platitudes they understand only too well already. It is necessary to make oneself understood, but it is not always necessary to say everything. He who says all says little, for at the end no one will be listening to him. What is the sense of the four lines at the end of La Fontaine's fable of the frog who puffed herself up. Is he afraid we should not understand it? Does this great painter need to write the names beneath the things he has painted? His morals, far from generalizing, restrict the lesson to some extent to the examples given, and prevent our applying them to others. Before I put the fables of this inimitable author into the hands of a youth, I should like to cut out all the conclusions with which he strives to explain what he has just said so clearly and pleasantly. If your pupil does not under-stand the fable without the explanation, he will not understand it with it.
[883:] Moreover, the fables would require to be arranged in a more didactic order, one more in agreement with the feelings and knowledge of the young adolescent. Can you imagine anything so foolish as to follow the mere numerical order of the book without regard to our requirements or our opportunities? First the grasshopper, then the crow, then the frog, then the two mules, etc. I am sick of these two mules; I remember seeing a child who was being trained to be a financier (and whom they were dazzling with the role he was going to play) read this fable, learn it, say it, repeat it again and again without finding in it the slightest objection to the profession to which he was destined. Not only have I never found children make any real use of the fables they learn, but I have never found anybody who took the trouble to see that they made such a use of them. The pretext for this form of study is moral instruction; but the real aim of mother and child is nothing but to get all the company together to watch the child while he recites his fables. When he is too old to recite them and old enough to make use of them, they are altogether forgotten. Only men, I repeat, can learn from fables, and Emile is now old enough to begin.
[884:] I show you from afar -- for I do not want to tell you everything -- the paths which diverge from the right way so that you may learn how to avoid them. I believe that in following the road I have marked out your pupil will buy his knowledge of mankind and his knowledge of himself in the best possible market. You will bring him to the point of contemplating the tricks of fortune without envying the fate of her favorites and to be content with himself without thinking himself better than others. You have begun by making him an actor that he may learn to be a spectator. This task must be completed; for from the theatre's pit one sees objects the way they seem, but from the stage one sees them as they are. To embrace the whole you need perspective; you must come up close to see the details. But how can a young man take part in the business of life? What right has he to be initiated into its dark secrets? His interests are confined within the limits of his own pleasures, he has no power over others, it is as if he had no power at all. Man is the cheapest commodity on the market, and among all our important rights of property, the rights of the individual are always considered last of all.
[885:] When I see that in the years of their greatest activity young people are limited to purely speculative studies, while later on and without the slightest experience they are suddenly thrown into the world and into business, it strikes me as contrary both to reason and to nature, and I am no longer surprised that so few men know how to conduct themselves. By what strange turn of mind are we taught so many useless things, whereas the art of action counts for nothing! People profess to form us for society, and we are taught as if each of us were to spend his life thinking alone in a cell or discussing airy subjects with disinterested people. You think you are teaching your children how to live by teaching them certain bodily contortions and certain word-formulas that signify nothing. I, too, have taught Emile how to live, for I have taught him to live with himself and, more than that, to earn his own bread. But this is not enough. To live in the world one must know how to get along with other people, one must know the tools that can be used to influence them, one must calculate the action and re-action of self-interest in civil society and estimate the results so accurately that one is rarely mistaken in his undertakings, or at least will have tried in the best possible way. The law does not allow young people to manage their own affairs nor to dispose of their own property; but what would be the use of these precautions if they never gained any experience until they were of age? They would have gained nothing by the delay, and would be as naïve at twenty-five as at fifteen. No doubt one must prevent a young man blinded by ignorance or misled by passion from hurting himself. But at any age it is permitted to be benevolent; at any age under the guidance of a wise man one can protect the unfortunate who need some support.
[886:] Mothers and nurses have affection for children because of the care they give them. The exercise of social virtues carries the love of humanity to the bottom of the heart. It is in doing good that we become good; I know of no practice more sure. Keep your pupil busy with the good deeds that are within his reach. Let the cause of the poor always be his; let him help them not merely with his money but with his care; let him serve them, protect them, sacrifice his life and his time to them. Let him be their agent -- he will never in his life have a more noble employment. See how many of the oppressed, who never get a hearing, will obtain justice when he -- with an intrepid firmness that only the practice of virtue inspires -- demands it for them; when he forces open the doors of the rich and noble; when he goes, if necessary, to the feet of the king himself to make heard the voices of the poor -- whose misery closes all access for them and who are so afraid of being punished for their misfortunes that they do not dare to complain.
[887:] But are we making Emile into a knight in shining armor, a do-gooder, a defender of noblesse oblige? Will he thrust himself into public life, play the wise man and defender of the laws before the nobles, the magistrates, the king? Will he present petitions before the judges and plead in the law courts? That I cannot say. The nature of things is not changed by terms of mockery and scorn. He will do all that he knows to be useful and good. He will do nothing more, and he knows that nothing is useful and good for him which is unbefitting his age. He knows that his first duty is to himself; that young men should distrust themselves, be circumspect in their conduct, respectful before those older than themselves, reticent and discrete in talking without good reason, modest Emile therefore loves peace.
[888:]The image of happiness pleases him, and when he can contribute to producing it this is one more way to share it. I refuse to assume that when he sees suffering he will feel the kind of sterile and cruel pity that is content to deplore only the ills it can heal. His active benevolence teaches him much that he would have learned much more slowly, or would never have learned at all, if his heart had been harder. If he sees discord arising among his friends he seeks to reconcile them. If he sees grieving he inquires as to the cause of the sufferings. If he meets two men
[Note 10] who hate each other, he wants to know the reason for their enmity. If he finds oppressed people groaning from their mistreatment by the rich and powerful, he tries to find a way to counteract this oppression, and in the interest he takes with regard to all such miserable people, the means of removing their sufferings are never indifferent to him. What must we do to make use of these impulses in a manner suitable to his age? Regulate his efforts and his knowledge, and use his zeal to increase them.
[889:] I am never weary of repeating: Put all the lessons of young people in actions rather than in speeches. Let them learn nothing from books that experience can teach them. How absurd to attempt to give them practice in speaking when they have nothing to say, to expect to make them experience at their school desks the energy of the language of passion and all the force of the arts of persuasion when they have nothing and nobody to persuade! All the rules of rhetoric are a mere waste of words to those who do not know how to use them for their own purposes. What difference does it make to a schoolboy to know how Hannibal encouraged his soldiers to cross the Alps? If instead of these grand harangues you showed him how to make his prefect to give him a holiday, you may be sure he would pay more attention to your rules.
[890:] If I wanted to teach rhetoric to a youth whose passions were already developed, I would present him continually with things that would gratify these passions, and I would explore with him what language he should use with people so as to get them to regard his desires favorably. But Emile is not in a condition so favorable to the art of oratory. Limited almost solely to physical necessities, he has less need of others than they of him; and having nothing to ask of others for himself, what he wants to persuade them to do does not affect him sufficiently to motivate him very much. It follows from this that in general he will need a simple and unfigurative language. He usually speaks to the point and only to make himself understood. He is not sententious, for he has not learned to generalize his ideas. He uses little imagersy because he is rarely impassioned.
[891:] Yet this is not because he is completely phlegmatc and cold. Neither his age, nor his character, nor his tastes permit of this. In the fire of adolescence the life-giving spirits retained in the blood and distilled again and again inspire his young heart with a warmth which glows in his eye -- a warmth that one feels in his words and sees in his actions. His language has taken on accent and sometimes vehemence. The noble sentiment that inspires it gives it force and elevation. Fillrd with tender love for humanity his words convey the movements of his heart. His open generosity has more of a certain enchanting quality than than does the artificial eloquence of others; or rather he alone has the only true eloquence, for he has only to show what he feels in order to communicate to those who hear him.
[892:] The more I think of it the more convinced I am that by thus putting our benevolence into action and drawing from our success or lack of success some conclusions as to their cause, we shall find that there is little useful knowledge that cannot be cultivated in the mind of a young man; and that together with all the true learning that one may acquire in the colleges he will acquire a science of still more importance -- which is the application of what he has learned to the purposes of life. Taking such an interest in his fellow-beings, it is impossible that he should not learn early on how to weigh and appreciate their actions, their tastes, their pleasures, and to give in general a more accurate evaluation of what can raise or lessen the happiness of man than those who care for nobody and never do anything for any one. Those who are always occupied solely with their own concerns are too self-indulgent to judge wisely of things. Relating everything to themselves alone and basing their ideas of good and bad solely on their own experience, their minds are filled with a thousand absurd prejudices, and anything which affects their own advantage even slightly seems an upheaval of the universe.
[893:] Let us extend amour-propre to other beings and it is transformed into virtue, and there is no heart of man in which this virtue does not have its root. The less the object of our care is directly dependent on ourselves, the less we have to fear from the illusion of individual self-interest. The more we can generalize this interest, the more equitable it becomes, and love for the human race is nothing other in us than love of justice. Do we want Emile to be a lover of truth, do we want him to know the truth? In all his dealings keep him far from himself. The more care he devotes to the happiness of others the more that care will be enlightened and wise, and the fewer mistakes he will make between good and evil. But never allow him any blind preference founded merely on personal predilection or unfair prejudice. Why should he harm one person to serve another? It matters little to him who has the greater share of happiness, providing he promotes the happiness of all. Apart from self-interest this care for the general well-being is the first concern of the wise man, for each of us is part of the human species and not part of any individual.
[894:] To prevent pity from degenerating into weakness we must generalize it and extend it to all humankind. Then we will yield to it only when it is in accordance with justice, since justice is of all the virtues that which contributes most to the common good. Reason and love for ourselves compel us to have more pity for our own species thanfor the next one, and to pity the wicked is to be very cruel to other men.
[895:] Moreover, one must remember that all these means that I use to launch my pupil beyond himself have also a direct relation to himself. For they not only cause him inward delight; by making him benevolent towards others I am also working to instruct him.
[896:] First I showed the means and now I will show the effect. What grand vistas I see being arranged little by little in his heart! What sublime sentiments crowd out the seeds of lesser passions in his heart! What clearness of judgment, what accuracy in reasoning, do I see developing in him from the inclinations we have cultivated, from the experience which concentrates the desires of a great soul within the narrow limits of possibility, so that a man superior to others who cannot raise them up to his level can at least lower himself to theirs! The true principles of justice, true types of beauty, all moral relations between man and man, all ideas of order, are engraved on his understanding. He sees the right place for each thing and the causes which remove it from that place. He sees what may do good, and what hinders it. Without having felt the passions of mankind, he knows their illusions and their effects.
[897:] I proceed attracted by the force of things but without imposing myself on the judgments of my readers. Long ago they have made up their minds that I am wandering in the land of fantasies, while for my part I think they remain in the country of prejudice. When I wander so far from popular beliefs I do not cease to bear them in mind; I examine them, I consider them, not that I may follow them or shun them, but that I may weigh them in the balance of reason. Whenever reason compels me to abandon these popular beliefs, I know by experience that my readers will not imitate me; I know that they will persist in refusing to go beyond what they can see, and that they will take the youth I am describing for an imaginary and fantastical being, merely because he is unlike the youths with whom they compare him -- without remembering that he must be different since he has been raised differently, influenced by sentiments contrary to theirs, instructed in a wholly different manner from them. So it would be much more surprising if he were like your pupils than if he were the way I have supposed. He is not a man's man but nature's man. Assuredly he must seem very strange in their eyes.
[898:] When I began this work I took for granted only what could be observed as readily by others as by myself. For our starting-point, the birth of man, is the same for all. But while I am seeking to cultivate nature and you are seeking to deprave it, the further we go the further apart we find ourselves. At six years old my pupil was not so very unlike yours, whom you had not yet had time to disfigure. Now there is nothing in common between them; and when they reach the age of manhood, which is now approaching, they will show themselves utterly different from each other, unless all my pains have been thrown away. There may not be so very great a difference in the amount of knowledge they possess, but there is all the difference in the world in the kind of knowledge. You are amazed to find that the one has noble sentiments of which the others have not the smallest germ, but remember that the latter are already philosophers and theologians while Emile does not even know what is meant by a philosopher and has scarcely heard the name of God.
[899:] But if you come and tell me, "There are no such young men; young people are not made that way; they have this passion or that, they do this or that," it is as if you denied that a pear tree could ever be a tall tree because the pear trees in our gardens are all dwarfs.
[900:] I beg these critics who are so ready with their blame to consider that I am as well acquainted as they are with everything they say, that I have probably given more thought to it, and that, as I have no private end to serve in getting them to agree with me, I have a right to demand that they should at least take time to find out where I am mistaken. Let them thoroughly examine the constitution of man, let them follow the earliest growth of the heart in any given circumstances, so as to see what a difference education may make in the individual; then let them compare my method of education with the results I ascribe to it; and let them tell me where my reasoning is unsound, and I shall have no answer to give them.
[901:] It is this that makes me speak so strongly, and as I think with good excuse. I have not pledged myself to any system, I depend as little as possible on arguments, and I trust to what I myself have observed. I do not base my ideas on what I have imagined, but on what I have seen. It is true that I have not confined my observations within the walls of any one town, nor to a single class of people. But having compared men of every class and every nation which I have been able to observe in the course of a life spent in this pursuit, I have discarded as artificial what belonged to one nation and not to another, to one rank and not to another; and I have regarded as proper to mankind what was common to all, at any age. in any station, and in any nation whatsoever.
[902:] Now if in accordance with this method you follow from infancy the course of a youth who has not been shaped to any special mold, one who depends as little as possible on authority and the opinions of others, which will he most resemble, my pupil or yours? This is, it seems to me, the question you must answer if you would know if I am mistaken.
[903:] It is not easy for a man to begin to think; but when once he has begun he never stops. Once a thinker, always a thinker, and the understanding once practiced in reflection will never rest. You may therefore think that I do too much or too little; that the human mind is not by nature so quick to unfold; and that after having given it opportunities it has not got, I keep it too long confined within a circle of ideas which it ought to have out-grown.
[904:] But remember, in the first place, that when I want to train a natural man, I do not want to make him a savage and to send him back to the woods; rather, that while in the whirl of social life it is enough that he should not let himself be carried away by the passions and opinions of men. Let him see with his eyes and feel with his heart, let him be governed by no authority but that of his own reason. Under these conditions it is plain that a multitude things that strike him, the oft-recurring sentiments which affect him, the different ways of satisfying his real needs, must give him many ideas he would not otherwise have acquired or would only have acquired much later. The natural progress of the mind is quickened but not reversed. The same man who would remain stupid in the forests would become wise and reasonable in towns, even if he were merely a spectator. Nothing is better fitted to make us wise than the sight of follies we do not share, and even if we share them, we still learn, provided we are not the dupe of our follies and provided we do not bring to them the same mistakes as those who commit them.
[905:] Consider also that while our faculties are limited to the things that can be seen, we offer scarcely any hold to the abstractions of philosophy or to purely intellectual ideas. To attain to these we require either to free ourselves from the body to which we are so strongly bound, or to proceed from object to object in a gradual and slow process, or else to leap across the intervening space with a gigantic bound of which no child is capable, one for which grown men even require steps made especially for them; but I find it very difficult to see how you propose to construct such steps.
[906:] The incomprehensible being that embraces all, that gives its motion to the world and shapes the system of all creatures, is not visible to our eyes or palpable to our hands; it escapes all of our senses. The work is seen, but the workman is hidden . It is even no small matter to know that it exists, and when we have got so far, and when we ask. What is it? Where is it? our mind is overwhelmed and goes astray, and we no longer know what to think.
[907:] Locke would have us begin with the study of spirits and go on to that of bodies. This is the method of superstition, prejudice, and error; it is not the method of nature, nor even that of well-ordered reason; it is to learn to see by shutting our eyes. We must have studied bodies long enough before we can form any true idea of spirits, or even suspect that there are such beings. The contrary method serves only to establish materialism.
[908:] Since our senses are the first instruments to our learning, corporeal and sensible bodies are the only bodies we directly apprehend. The word "spirit" has no meaning for any one who has not philosophized. To the unlearned and to the child a spirit is merely a body. Do they not imagine spirits that groan, speak, fight, and make noises? Now one must admit that spirits with arms and voices are very like bodies. This is why every nation on the face of the earth, not even excepting the Jews, have made corporeal gods for themselves. We, ourselves, with our words, Spirit, Trinity, Persons, are for the most part quite anthropomorphic. I admit that we are taught that God is everywhere; but we also believe that there is air everywhere, at least in our atmosphere; and the word Spirit meant originally nothing more than breath and wind. Once you teach people to say what they do not understand, it is easy enough to get them to say anything you like.
[909:] The sentiment of our action upon other bodies must have first induced us to suppose that their action upon us was effected in like manner. Thus man began by thinking that all things whose action affected him were alive. Feeling himself less strong than most of these beings, he therefore supposed that they were limitless and he made them his gods as soon as he had supplied them with bodies. In the earliest times men were in terror of everything and everything in nature seemed alive. The idea of matter was developed as slowly as that of spirit, for the former is itself an abstraction. They thus filled the universe with gods that could be sensed. The stars, the winds and the mountains, rivers, trees, and towns, their very dwellings, each had its soul, its god, its life. The teraphim of Laban, the manitous of the indians, the fetishes of the Negroes, every work of nature and of man were the first gods of mortals; polytheism was their first religion and idolatry their earliest form of worship. The idea of one God was beyond their grasp, until by generalizing their ideas more and more they were in a position to get to the idea of a first cause and gave meaning to the word "substance," which is at bottom the greatest of abstractions. So every child who believes in God is of necessity an idolater or at least he regards the Deity as a man, and when once the imagination has perceived God, it is very seldom that the understanding conceives him. Locke's order leads us into this same mistake.
[910:] Having arrived, I know not how, at the abstract idea of substance, it is clear that to allow of a single substance it must be assumed that this substance is endowed with incompatible and mutually exclusive properties such as thought and size -- one of which is by its nature divisible and the other wholly incapable of division. Moreover it is assumed that thought or, if you prefer it, sentiment, is a primitive quality inseparable from the substance to which it belongs, that its relation to the substance is like the relation between substance and size. Hence it is inferred that beings who lose one of these attributes lose the substance to which it belongs, consequently that death is, therefore, but a separation of substances, and that those beings in whom the two attributes are found are composed of the two substances to which those two qualities belong.
[911:] But consider what a distance still remains between the idea of two substances and that of the divine nature, between the incomprehensible idea of the influence of our soul upon our body and the idea of the influence of God upon every living creature. The ideas of creation. destruction, ubiquity, eternity, almighty power, those of the divine attributes--these are all ideas so confused and obscure that few men succeed in grasping them. Yet there is nothing obscure about them to the common people, because they do not understand them in the least. How then should they present themselves in full force, that is to say in all their obscurity, to the young mind which is still occupied with the first working of the senses and can conceive only of that which he can touch? In vain do the abysses of the infinite open around us; a child does not know the enough to be awed by them; his weak eyes cannot gauge their depths. To children everything is infinite. They cannot put limits on anything; not that their measure is so large, but because their understanding is so small. I have even noticed that they place the infinite rather below than above the dimensions known to them. They judge a distance to be immense rather by their feet than by their eyes; infinity is bounded for them. not so much by what they can see, but how far they can go. If you talk to them of the power of God, they will think he is nearly as strong as their father. As their own knowledge is in everything the measure of what is possible, they always picture what is described to them as rather smaller than what they know. Such are the natural judgments of an ignorant and feeble mind. Ajax was afraid to measure his strength against Achilles and challenged Jupiter to combat, for he knew Achilles and did not know Jupiter. A Swiss peasant thought himself the richest man alive; when they tried to explain to him what a king was, he asked with pride, "Has the king got a hundred cows on the high pastures?"
[912:] I foressee that many of my readers will be surprised to find me following my pupil through his early years without speaking to him of religion. At fifteen he will not even know that he has a soul, and perhaps even at eighteen he may not be ready to learn about it. For if he learns about it too soon, there is the risk of his never really knowing it.
[913:] If I had to depict the most regrettable stupidity, I would show a pedant teaching children the catechism; if I wanted to drive a child crazy I would require him to explain what he learned in his catechism. You will object that since most of the Christian dogmas are mysteries, to wait until the human mind is capable of conceiving of them is to wait not merely until the child is a man, but until the man is dead. To that I reply, first that there are mysteries not only impossible for man to conceive of but to believe in; and I do not see what we gain by teaching them to children, unless you want to teach them how to lie at an early age. Moreover, I assert that to admit that there are mysteries, you must at least realize that they are incomprehensible, and children are not even capable of this conception! At an age when everything is mysterious, there are no mysteries properly so-called.
[914:] "We must believe in God if we would be saved." This doctrine wrongly understood is the root of sanguinary intolerance and the cause of all the futile teaching which strikes a deadly blow at human reason by accustoming it to rely on mere words. No doubt there is not a moment to lose in order to merit eternal salvation; but if the repetition of certain words suffices to obtain it, I do not see what prevents us from peopling heaven with starlings and magpies as well as with children.
[915:] The obligation to believe presupposes its possibility. The philosopher who does not believe is wrong, for he misuses the reason he has cultivated, and he is able to understand the truths he rejects. But the child who professes the Christian faith -- what does he believe? Just what he understands; and he understands so little of what he is made to say that if you tell him to say just the opposite he will agree to it just as willingly. The faith of children and the faith of many men is a matter of geography. Will they be rewarded for having been born in Rome rather than in Mecca? One of them is told that Mohammed is the prophet of God and so he says, "Mohammed is the prophet of God." The other is told that Mohammed is a fake and he says, "Mohammed is a fake." Each of them would have affirmed just the opposite had he found himself in a different place. Starting with such similar dispositions, should one be sent to paradise and the other to hell? When a child says he believes in God, it is not God he believes in, but Peter or James, who told him that there is something called God, and he believes it after the fashion of Euripides -- "O Jupiter, of whom I know nothing but thy name."
[Note 11]
[916:] We maintain that no child who dies before the age of reason will be deprived of everlasting happiness. The Catholics believe the same of all children who have been baptized, even though they have never heard of God. There are, therefore, circumstances in which one can be saved without belief in God, and these circumstances occur in the case of children or madmen when the human mind is incapable of the operations necessary to recognize the divinity. The only difference I see between you and me is that you profess that children of seven years old have this capacity and I do not think them ready for it even at fifteen. Whether I am right or wrong depends not on an article of the faith but on a simple observation in natural history.
[917:] From the same principle it is plain that any man having reached old age without faith in God will not, therefore, be deprived of God's presence in another life if his blindness was not voluntary; and I maintain that it is not always voluntary. You admit that it is so in the case of lunatics deprived by disease of their spiritual faculties but not of their manhood and therefore still entitled to the goodness of their Creator. Why then should we not also admit it for those who have been sequestered from all society since childhood and have led an absolutely primitive life without the knowledge that comes from intercourse with other men?
[Note 12] For it is clearly impossible that such a savage could ever raise his thoughts to the knowledge of the true God. Reason tells us that man should only be punished for his willful faults and that invincible ignorance can never be imputed to him as a crime. Hence it follows that in the sight of eternal justice every man who would believe if he had the necessary knowledge is counted a believer, and that there will be no unbelievers to be punished except those who have closed their hearts against the truth.
[918:] Let us beware of proclaiming the truth to those who are not in a condition to hear it, for to do so is to try to substitute error for truth. It would be better to have no idea at all of the divinity than to have ideas that are mean, grotesque, harmful, and unworthy. It is less of an evil to fail to perceive the divine than to insult it. The worthy Plutarch says, "I would rather men said, 'There is no such person as Plutarch,' than that they should say, 'Plutarch is unjust, envious, jealous, and such a tyrant that he demands more than can be performed.'"
[919:] The chief harm which results from the deformed ideas of the divinity that are traced on the minds of children is that they stay there all their life, and as men they conceive no more of God than they did as children. In Switzerland I once saw a good and pious mother who was so convinced of the truth of this maxim that she did not want to teach her son religion during his first years for fear lest he should be satisfied with this crude teaching and neglect a better teaching when he reached the age of reason. This child never heard God spoken of except with devotion and reverence , and as soon as he attempted to say the word he was silenced, as if the subject were too sublime and great for him. This reserve aroused his curiosity and his amour-propre; he looked forward to the time when he would know this mystery so carefully hidden from him. The less they spoke of God to him, the less he was himself permitted to speak of God, the more he thought about Him. This child saw God everywhere. What I should most fear from this indiscrete affectation of mystery is that by over-stimulating the youth's imagination you may turn his head and thus finally make a fanatic rather than a believer.
[920:] But we need fear nothing of the sort for Emile, who always declines to pay attention to what is beyond his reach and listens with profound indifference to things he does not understand. There are so many things of which he is accustomed to say, "That is no concern of mine," that one more will make little difference to him; and when he does begin to worry about these great questions, it is because the natural growth of his knowledge is turning his thoughts that way.
[921:] We have seen the road by which the cultivated human mind approaches these mysteries, and I am ready to admit that it would not attain to them naturally even in the midst of society until a much later age. But since there are in this same society inevitable causes which hasten the development of the passions, if we did not also hasten the development of the knowledge which controls these passions we should indeed depart from the order of nature and the equilibrium would be broken. When one can no longer succeed in moderating a too rapid development on one side, one must guide with the same rapidity the development of others which correspond to it, so that the order of nature may not be inverted, and so that things that should progress together and not become separated, and so that the man who is whole at every moment of his life will never find himself at one stage in one of his faculties and at another stage in another faculty.
[922:] What a difficulty do I see before me! A difficulty all the greater because it depends less on things than on the cowardice of those who do not dare to resolve it. Let us begin at least by daring to state the problem. A child should always be brought up in his father's religion; he is always shown that this religion, whatever it may be, is the only true religion, that the others are nothing but extravagance and absurdity. The force of the argument depends entirely on the country in which it is put forward. Let a Turk, who thinks Christianity so absurd at Constantinople, come see what they think of Mohammedanism in Paris. It is above all in matters of religion that opinion triumphs. But we who profess to shake off its yoke entirely, we who do not with to yield anything to authority, we who do not want to teach Emile anything which he could not learn for himself in any country -- in what religion will we raise him? To what sect shall this man of nature be joined? The answer is quite simple, it seems to me. We will join him neither to this one nor that one but we will put him into a condition to choose for himself the one to which the best use of his reason leads him.Incedo per ignesSuppositos cineri doloso. -- Horace, lib. ii. ode .
[923:] No matter. Zeal and good faith have thus far taken the place of prudence. I hope that these guardians will not fail me now. Reader, do not fear lest I that I will take precautions unworthy of a lover of truth. I shall never forget my motto, but it is only too permissible to distrust my own judgment. Instead of telling you now what I think myself, I will tell you what a man who is more worthy than me thinks. I guarantee the truth of the facts that are about to be reported to you. They actually happened to the author of the paper I am about to transcribe. It is for you to see whether one can draw from them any useful reflections on the subject at hand. I do not offer my own or another's sentiment as your rule; I merely present them for your examination.
[924:] "Thirty years ago there was a young man in an Italian town; he was an exile from his native land and found himself reduced to the depths of poverty. He had been born a Calvinist, but the consequences of his own folly had made him a fugitive in a strange land; he had no money and he changed his religion for a morsel of bread. There was a hostel for proselytes in that town to which he gained admission. The study of controversy inspired doubts he had never felt before, and he made acquaintance with evil hitherto unsuspected by him; he heard strange doctrines and he met with morals still stranger to him; he beheld this evil conduct and nearly fell a victim to it. He longed to escape, but he was locked up; he complained, but his complaints were unheeded; at the mercy of his tyrants, he found himself treated as a criminal because he would not share their crimes. The anger kindled in a young and untried heart by the first experience of violence and injustice may be realized by those who have themselves experienced it. Tears of anger flowed from his eyes, he was wild with rage; he prayed to heaven and to man, and his prayers were unheard; he spoke to every one and no one listened to him. He saw no one but the vilest servants under the control of the wretch who insulted him, or accomplices in the same crime who laughed at his resistance and encouraged him to follow their example. He would have been ruined had not a worthy priest visited the hostel on some matter of business. He found an opportunity of consulting him secretly. The priest was poor and in need of help himself, but the victim had more need of his assistance, and he did not hesitate to help him to escape at the risk of making a dangerous enemy.
[925:] Having escaped from vice to return to poverty, the young man struggled vainly against fate: for a moment he thought he had gained the victory. At the first gleam of good fortune his woes and his protector were alike forgotten. He was soon punished for this ingratitude; all his hopes vanished; youth indeed was on his side, but his romantic ideas spoiled everything. He had neither talent nor skill to make his way easily, he could neither be common-place nor wicked, he expected so much that he got nothing. When he had sunk to his former poverty, when he was without food or shelter and ready to die of hunger, he remembered his benefactor.
[926:] He went back to him, found him, and was kindly welcomed; the sight of him reminded the priest of a good deed he had done; such a memory always rejoices the heart. This man was by nature humane and pitiful; he felt the sufferings of others through his own, and his heart had not been hardened by prosperity; in a word, the lessons of wisdom and an enlightened virtue had reinforced his natural kindness of heart. He welcomed the young man, found him a lodging, and recommended him; he shared with him his living which was barely enough for two. He did more, he instructed him, consoled him, and taught him the difficult art of bearing adversity in patience. You prejudiced people, would you have expected to find all this in a priest and in Italy?
[927:] This worthy priest was a poor Savoyard clergyman who had offended his bishop by some youthful fault; he had crossed the Alps to find a position which he could not obtain in his own country. He lacked neither wit nor learning, and with his interesting countenance he had met with patrons who found him a place in the household of one of the ministers, as tutor to his son. He preferred poverty to dependence, and he did not know how to get on with the great. He did not stay long with this minister, and when he departed he took with him his good opinion; and as he lived a good life and gained the hearts of everybody, he was glad to be forgiven by his bishop and to obtain from him a small parish among the mountains, where he might pass the rest of his life. This was the limit of his ambition.
[928:] He was attracted by the young fugitive and he questioned him closely. He saw that ill-fortune had already seared his heart, that scorn and disgrace had overthrown his courage, and that his pride, transformed into bitterness and spite, led him to see nothing in the harshness and injustice of men but their evil disposition and the vanity of all virtue. He had seen that religion was but a mask for selfishness, and its holy services but a screen for hypocrisy; he had found in the subtleties of empty disputatious heaven and hell awarded as prizes for mere words; he had seen the sublime and primitive idea of Divinity disfigured by the vain fancies of men; and when, as he thought, faith in God required him to renounce the reason God himself had given him, he held in equal scorn our foolish imaginings and the object with which they are concerned. With no knowledge of things as they are, without any idea of their origins, he was immersed in his stubborn ignorance and utterly despised those who thought they knew more than himself.
[929:] The neglect of all religion soon leads to the neglect of a man's duties. The heart of this young libertine was already far on this road. Yet his was not a bad nature, though incredulity and misery were gradually stifling his natural disposition and dragging him down to ruin; they were leading him into the conduct of a rascal and the morals of an atheist.
[930:] The almost inevitable evil was not actually consummated. The young man was not ignorant, his education had not been neglected. He was at that happy age when the pulse beats strongly and the heart is warm but is not yet enslaved by the madness of the senses. His heart had not lost its elasticity. A native modesty, a timid disposition restrained him, and prolonged for him that period during which you watch your pupil so carefully. The hateful example of brutal depravity, of vice without any charm, had not merely failed to quicken his imagination, it had deadened it. For a long time disgust rather than virtue preserved his innocence, which would only succumb to more seductive charms.
[931:] The priest saw the danger and the way of escape. He was not discouraged by difficulties, he took a pleasure in his task; he determined to complete it and to restore to virtue the victim he had snatched from vice. He set about it cautiously; the beauty of the motive gave him courage and inspired him with means worthy of his zeal. Whatever might be the result, his pains would not be wasted. We are always successful when our sole aim is to do good.
[932:] He began to win the confidence of the proselyte by not asking any price for his kindness, by not intruding himself upon him, by not preaching at him, by always coming down to his level, and treating him as an equal. It was, so I think, a touching sight to see a serious person becoming the comrade of a young scamp, and virtue putting up with the speech of license in order to triumph over it more completely. When the young fool came to him with his silly confidences and opened his heart to him, the priest listened and set him at his ease; without giving his approval to what was bad, he took an interest in everything; no tactless reproof checked his chatter or closed his heart; the pleasure which he thought was given by his conversation increased his pleasure in telling everything; thus he made his general confession without knowing he was confessing anything.
[933:] After he had made a thorough study of his feelings and disposition, the priest saw plainly that, although he was not ignorant for his age, he had forgotten everything that he most needed to know, and that the disgrace which fortune had brought upon him had stifled in him all real sense of good and evil. There is a stage of degradation which robs the soul of its life; and the inner voice cannot be heard by one whose whole mind is bent on getting food. To protect the unlucky youth from the moral death which threatened him, he began to revive his amour-propre and his good opinion of himself. He showed him a happier future in the right use of his talents; he revived the generous warmth of his heart by stories of the noble deeds of others; by rousing his admiration for the doers of these deeds he revived his desire to do like deeds himself. To draw him gradually from his idle and wandering life, he made him copy out extracts from well-chosen books; he pretended to want these extracts, and so nourished in him the noble feeling of gratitude. He taught him indirectly through these books, and thus he made him sufficiently regain his good opinion of himself so that he would no longer think himself good for nothing, and would not make himself despicable in his own eyes.
[934:] A trifling incident will show how this kindly man tried, unknown to him, to raise the heart of his disciple out of its degradation, without seeming to think of teaching. The priest was so well known for his uprightness and his discretion, that many people preferred to entrust their alms to him, rather than to the wealthy clergy of the town. One day someone had given him some money to distribute among the poor, and the young man was mean enough to ask for some of it on the score of poverty. "No," said he, "we are brothers, you belong to me and I must not touch the money entrusted to me." Then he gave him the sum he had asked for out of his own pocket. Lessons of this sort seldom fail to make an impression on the heart of young people who are not wholly corrupt.
[935:] I am weary of speaking in the third person, and the precaution is unnecessary; for you are well aware, my dear friend, that I myself was this unhappy fugitive; I think I am so far removed from the disorders of my youth that I may venture to confess them, and the hand which rescued me well deserves that I should at least do honor to its goodness at the cost of some slight shams.
[936:] What struck me most was to see in the private life of my worthy master, virtue without hypocrisy, humanity without weakness, speech always plain and straightforward, and conduct in accordance with this speech. I never saw him trouble himself whether those whom he assisted went to vespers or confession, whether they fasted at the appointed seasons and went without meat; nor did he impose upon them any other like conditions, without which you might die of hunger before you could hope for any help from the devout.
[937:] Far from displaying before him the zeal of a new convert, I was encouraged by these observations and I made no secret of my way of thinking, nor did he seem to be shocked by it. Sometimes I would say to myself, he overlooks my indifference to the religion I have adopted because he sees I am equally indifferent to the religion in which I was brought up; he knows that my scorn for religion is not confined to one sect. But what could I think when I sometimes heard him give his approval to doctrines contrary to those of the Roman Catholic Church, and apparently having but a poor opinion of its ceremonies. I should have thought him a Protestant in disguise if I had not beheld him so faithful to those very customs which he seemed to value so lightly; but I knew he fulfilled his priestly duties as carefully in private as in public, and I knew not what to think of these apparent contradictions. Except for the fault which had formerly brought about his disgrace, a fault which he had only partially overcome, his life was exemplary, his conduct beyond reproach, his conversation honest and discreet. While I lived on very friendly terms with him, I learnt day by day to respect him more; and when he had completely won my heart by such great kindness, I awaited with eager curiosity the time when I should learn what was the principle on which the uniformity of this strange life was based.
[938:] This opportunity was a long time coming. Before taking his disciple into his confidence, he tried to get the seeds of reason and kindness which he had sown in my heart to germinate. The most difficult fault to overcome in me was a certain haughty misanthropy, a certain bitterness against the rich and successful, as if their wealth and happiness had been gained at my own expense, and as if their supposed happiness had been unjustly taken from my own. The foolish vanity of youth, which kicks against the pricks of humiliation, made me only too much inclined to this angry temper; and the self-respect, which my mentor strove to revive, led to pride, which made men still more vile in my eyes, and only added scorn to my hatred.
[939:] Without directly attacking this pride, he prevented it from developing into hardness of heart; and without depriving me of my self-esteem, he made me less scornful of my neighbors. By continually drawing my attention from the empty show, and directing it to the genuine sufferings concealed by it, he taught me to deplore the faults of my fellows and feel for their sufferings, to pity rather than envy them. Touched with compassion towards human weaknesses through the profound conviction of his own failings, he viewed all men as the victims of their own vices and those of others; he beheld the poor groaning under the tyranny of the rich, and the rich under the tyranny of their own prejudices. "Believe me," said he, "our illusions, far from concealing our woes, only increase them by giving value to what is in itself valueless, in making us aware of all sorts of fancied privations which we should not other-wise feel. Peace of heart consists in despising everything that might disturb that peace; the man who clings most closely to life is the man who can least enjoy it; and the man who most eagerly desires happiness is always most miserable."
[940:] "What gloomy ideas!" I exclaimed bitterly. "If we must deny ourselves everything, we might as well never have been born; and if we must despise even happiness itself who can be happy?" "I am," replied the priest one day, in a tone which made a great impression on me. "You happy ! So little favored by fortune, so poor, an exile and persecuted, you are happy! How have you contrived to be happy?" "My child," he answered, "I will gladly tell you"
[941:] Thereupon he explained that, having heard my confessions, he would confess to me. "I will open my whole heart to yours," he said, embracing me. "You will see me, if not as I am, at least as I seem to myself. When you have heard my whole profession of faith, when you really know the condition of my heart, you will know why I think myself happy, and if you think as I do, you will know how to be happy too. But these explanations are not the affair of a moment, it will take time to show you all my ideas about the lot of man and the true value of life; let us choose a fitting time and a place where we may continue this conversation without interruption."
[942:] I showed him how eager I was to hear him. The meeting was fixed for the very next morning. It was summer time; we rose at daybreak. He took me out of the town on to a high hill above the river Po, whose course we beheld as it flowed between its fertile banks; in the distance the landscape was crowned by the vast chain of the Alps; the beams of the rising sun already touched the plains and cast across the fields long shadows of trees, hillocks, and houses, and enriched with a thousand gleams of light the fairest picture which the human eye can see. You would have thought that nature was displaying all her splendor before our eyes to furnish a text for our conversation. After contemplating this scene for a space in silence, the man of peace spoke to me.PROFESSION OF FAITH OF A SAVOYARD VICAR
[943:] My child, do not look to me for learned speeches or profound arguments. I am no great philosopher, nor do I desire to be one. I have, however, a certain amount of common-sense and a constant devotion to truth. I have no wish to argue with you nor even to convince you; it is enough for me to show you, in all simplicity of heart, what I really think. Consult your own heart while I speak; that is all I ask. If I am mistaken, I am honestly mistaken, and therefore my error will not be counted to me as a crime; if you, too, are honestly mistaken, there is no great harm done. If I am right, we are both endowed with reason, we have both the same motive for listening to the voice of reason. Why should not you think as I do?
[944:] By birth I was a peasant and poor; to till the ground was my portion; but my parents thought it a finer thing that I should learn to get my living as a priest and they found means to send me to college. I am quite sure that neither my parents nor I had any idea of seeking after what was good, useful, or true; we only sought what was wanted to get me ordained. I learned what was taught me, said what I was told to say, I promised all that was required, and I became a priest. But I soon discovered that when I promised not to be a man, I had promised more than I could perform.
[945:] Conscience, they tell us, is the creature of prejudice, but I know from experience that conscience persists in following the order of nature in spite of all the laws of man. In vain is this or that forbidden; remorse makes her voice heard but feebly when what we do is permitted by well-ordered nature, and still more when we are doing her bidding. My good youth, nature has not yet appealed to your senses; may you long remain in this happy state when her voice is the voice of innocence. Remember that to anticipate her teaching is to offend more deeply against her than to resist her teaching; you must first learn to resist, that you may know when to yield without wrong-doing.
[946:] From my youth up I had reverenced the married state as the first and most sacred institution of nature. Having renounced the right to marry, I was resolved not to profane the sanctity of marriage; for in spite of my education and reading I had always led a simple and regular life, and my mind had preserved the innocence of its natural instincts; these instincts had not been obscured by worldly wisdom, while my poverty kept me remote from the temptations dictated by the sophistry of vice.
[947:] This very resolution proved my ruin. My respect for marriage led to the discovery of my misconduct. The scandal must be expiated; I was arrested, suspended, and dismissed; I was the victim of my scruples rather than of my incontinence, and I had reason to believe, from the reproaches which accompanied my disgrace, that one can often escape punishment by being guilty of a worse fault.
[948:] A thoughtful mind soon learns from such experiences. I found my former ideas of justice, honesty, and every duty of man overturned by these painful events, and day by day I was losing my hold on one or another of the opinions I had accepted. What was left was not enough to form a body of ideas which could stand alone, and I felt that the evidence on which my principles rested was being weakened; at last I knew not what to think, and I came to the same conclusion as yourself, but with this difference: My lack of faith was the slow growth of manhood, attained with great difficulty, and all the harder to uproot.
[949:] I was in that state of doubt and uncertainty which Descartes considers essential to the search for truth. It is a state which cannot continue, it is disquieting and painful; only vicious tendencies and an idle heart can keep us in that state. My heart was not so corrupt as to delight in it, and there is nothing which so maintains the habit of thinking as being better pleased with oneself than with one's lot.
[950:] I pondered, therefore, on the sad fate of mortals, adrift upon this sea of human opinions, without compass or rudder, and abandoned to their stormy passions with no guide but an inexperienced pilot who does not know whence he comes or whither he is going. I said to myself, "I love truth, I seek her, and cannot find her. Show me truth and I will hold her fast; why does she hide her face from the eager heart that would fain worship her?"
[951:] Although I have often experienced worse sufferings, I have never led a life so uniformly distressing as this period of unrest and anxiety, when I wandered incessantly from one doubt to another, gaining nothing from my prolonged meditations but uncertainty, darkness, and contradiction with regard to the source of my being and the rule of my duties.
[952:] I cannot understand how any one can be a skeptic sincerely and on principle. Either such philosophers do not exist or they are the most miserable of men. Doubt with regard to what we ought to know is a condition too violent for the human mind; it cannot long be endured; in spite of itself the mind decides one way or another, and it prefers to be deceived rather than to believe nothing.
[953:] My perplexity was increased by the fact that I had been brought up m a church which decides everything and permits no doubts, so that having rejected one article of faith I was forced to reject the rest; since I could not accept absurd decisions, I was deprived of those which were not absurd. When I was told to believe everything, I could believe nothing, and I knew not where to stop.
[954:] I consulted the philosophers, I searched their books and examined their various theories; I found them all alike proud, assertive, dogmatic, professing, even in their so-called skepticism, to know everything, proving nothing, scoffing at each other. This last trait, which was common to all of them, struck me as the only point in which they were right. Braggarts in attack, they are weaklings in defense. Weigh their arguments, they are all destructive; count their voices, every one speaks for himself; they are only agreed in arguing with each other. I could find no way out of my uncertainty by listening to them.
[955:] I suppose this prodigious diversity of opinion is caused, in the first place, by the weakness of the human intellect; and, in the second, by pride. We have no means of measuring this vast machine, we are unable to calculate its workings; we know neither its guiding principles nor its final purpose; we do not know ourselves, we know neither our nature nor the spirit that moves us; we scarcely know whether man is one or many; we are surrounded by impenetrable mysteries. These mysteries are beyond the region of sense, we think we can penetrate them by the light of reason, but we fall back on our imagination. Through this imagined world each forces a way for himself which he holds to be right; none can tell whether his path will lead him to the goal. Yet we long to know and understand it all. The one thing we do not know is the limit of the knowable. We prefer to trust to chance and to believe what is not true, rather than to own that not one of us can see what really is. A fragment of some vast whole whose bounds are beyond our gaze, a fragment abandoned by its Creator to our foolish quarrels, we are vain enough to want to determine the nature of that whole and our own relations with regard to it.
[956:] If the philosophers were in a position to declare the truth, which of them would care to do so? Every one of them knows that his own system rests on no surer foundations than the rest, but he maintains it because it is his own. There is not one of them who, if he chanced to discover the difference between truth and falsehood, would not prefer his own lie to the truth which another had discovered. Where is the philosopher who would not deceive the whole world for his own glory? If he can rise above the crowd, if he can excel his rivals, what more does he want? Among believers he is an atheist; among atheists he would be a believer.
[957:] The first thing I learned from these considerations was to restrict my inquiries to what directly concerned myself, to rest in profound ignorance of everything else, and not even to trouble myself to doubt anything beyond what I required to know.
[958:] I also realized that the philosophers, far from ridding me of my vain doubts, only multiplied the doubts that tormented me and failed to remove any one of them. So I chose another guide and said, "Let me follow the inner light; it will not lead me so far astray as others have done, or if it does it will be my own fault, and I shall not go so far wrong if I follow my own illusions as if I trusted to their deceits."
[959:] I then went over in my mind the various opinions which I had held in the course of my life, and I saw that although no one of them was plain enough to gain immediate belief, some were more probable than others, and my inward consent was given or withheld in proportion to this improbability. Having discovered this, I made an unprejudiced comparison of all these different ideas, and I perceived that the first and most general of them was also the simplest and the most reasonable, and that it would have been accepted by every one if only it had been last instead of first. Imagine all your philosophers, ancient and modern, having exhausted their strange Systems of force, chance, fate, necessity, atoms, a living world, animated matter, and every variety of materialism. Then comes the illustrious Clarke who gives light to the world and proclaims the Being of beings and the Giver of things. What universal admiration, what unanimous applause would have greeted this new system -- a system so great, so illuminating, and so simple. Other systems are full of absurdities; this system seems to me to contain fewer things which are beyond the understanding of the human mind. I said to myself, "Every system has its insoluble problems, for the finite mind of man is too small to deal with them; these difficulties are therefore no final arguments, against any system. But what a difference there is between the direct evidence on which these systems are based! Should we not prefer that theory which alone explains all the facts, when it is no more difficult than the rest?
[960:] Bearing thus within my heart the love of truth as my only philosophy, and as my only method a clear and simple rule which dispensed with the need for vain and subtle arguments, I returned with the help of this rule to the examination of such knowledge as concerned myself; I was resolved to admit as self-evident all that I could not honestly refuse to believe, and to admit as true all that seemed to follow directly from this; all the rest I determined to leave undecided, neither accepting nor rejecting it, nor yet troubling myself to clear up difficulties which did not lead to any practical ends.
[961:] But who am I? What right have I to decide? What is it that determines my judgments? If they are inevitable, if they are the results of the impressions I receive, I am wasting my strength in such inquiries; they would be made or not without any interference of mine. I must therefore first turn my eyes upon myself to acquaint myself with the instrument I desire to use, and to discover how far it is reliable.
[962:] I exist, and I have senses through which I receive impressions. This is the first truth that strikes me and I am forced to accept it. Have 'I any independent knowledge of my existence, or am I only aware of it through my sensations? This is my first difficulty, and so far I cannot solve it. For I continually experience sensations, either directly or indirectly through memory, so how can I know if the feeling of self is something beyond these sensations or if it can exist independently of them?
[963:] My sensations take place in myself, for they make me aware of my own existence; but their cause is outside me, for they affect me whether I have any reason for them or not, and they are produced or destroyed independently of me. So I clearly perceive that my sensation, which is within me, and its cause or its object, which is outside me, are different things.
[964:] Thus, not only do I exist, but other entities exist also, that is to say, the objects of my sensations; and even if these objects are merely ideas, still these ideas are not me.
[965:] But everything outside myself; everything which acts upon my senses, I call matter, and all the particles of matter which I suppose to be united into separate entities I call bodies. Thus all the disputes of the idealists and the realists have no meaning for me; their distinctions between the appearance and the reality of bodies are wholly fanciful.
[966:] I am now as convinced of the existence of the universe as of my own. I next consider the objects of my sensations, and I find that I have the power of comparing them, so I perceive that I am endowed with an active force of which I was not previously aware.
[967:] To perceive is to feel; to compare is to judge; to judge and to feel are not the same. Through sensation objects present themselves to me separately and singly as they are in nature; by comparing them I rearrange them, I shift them so to speak, I place one upon another to decide whether they are alike or different, or more generally to find out their relations. To my mind, the distinctive faculty of an active or intelligent being is the power of understanding this word "is." I seek in vain in the merely sensitive entity that intelligent force which compares and judges; I can find no trace of it in its nature. This passive entity will be aware of each object separately, it will even be aware of the whole formed by the two together, but having no power to place them side by side it can never compare them, it can never form a judgment with regard to them.
[968:] To see two things at once is not to see their relations nor to judge of their differences; to perceive several objects, one beyond the other, is not to relate them. I may have at the same moment an idea of a big stick and a little stick without comparing them, without judging that one is less than the other, just as I can see my whole hand without counting my fingers.
[Note 13] These comparative ideas, greater, smaller, together with number ideas of one, two, etc., are certainly not sensations, although my mind only produces them when my sensations occur.
[969:] We are told that a sensitive being distinguishes sensations from each other by the inherent differences in the sensations; this requires explanation. When the sensations are different, the sensitive being distinguishes them by their differences; when they are alike, he distinguishes them because he is aware of them one beyond the other. Otherwise, how could he distinguish between two equal objects simultaneously experienced? He would necessarily confound the two objects and take them for one object, especially under a system which professed that the representative sensations of space have no extension.
[970:] When we become aware of the two sensations to be compared, their impression is made, each object is perceived, both are perceived, but for all that their relation is not perceived. If the judgment of this relation were merely a sensation, and came to me solely from the object itself, my judgments would never be mistaken, for it is never untrue that I feel what I feel.
[971:] Why then am I mistaken as to the relation between these two sticks, especially when they are not parallel? Why, for example, do I say the small stick is a third of the large, when it is only a quarter? Why is the picture, which is the sensation, unlike its model which is the object? It is because I am active when I judge, because the operation of comparison is at fault; because my under-standing, which judges of relations, mingles its errors with the truth of sensations, which only reveal to me things.
[972:] Add to this a consideration which will, I feel sure, appeal to you when you 'have thought about it: it is this -- If we were purely passive in the use of our senses, there would be no communication between them; it would be impossible to know that the body we are touching and the thing we are looking at is the same. Either we should never perceive anything outside ourselves, or there would be for us five substances perceptible by the senses, whose identity we should have no means of perceiving.
[973:] This power of my mind which brings my sensations together and compares them may be called by any name; let it be called attention, meditation, reflection, or what you will; it is still true that it is in me and not in things, that it is I alone who produce it, though I only produce it when I receive an impression from things. Though I am compelled to feel or not to feel, I am free to examine more or less what I feel.
[974:] I am not therefore simply a sensitive, passive being, but an active and intelligent being, whatever philosophy says about it, I dare pretend to the honor of thinking. I know only that truth is in things and not in my spirit which judges them, and that the less I put of myself into the judgments that I make, the more I am certain to approach the truth: thus my rule of giving myself up to my sensations rather than to reasoning is confirmed by reason itself.
[975:] Being now, so to speak, sure of myself, I begin to look at things outside myself, and I behold myself with a sort of shudder flung at random into this vast universe, plunged as it were into the vast number of entities, knowing nothing of what they are in themselves or in relation to me. I study them, I observe them; and the first object which suggests itself for comparison with them is myself.
[976:] All that I perceive through the senses is matter, and I deduce all the essential properties of matter from the sensible qualities which make me perceive it, qualities which are inseparable from it. I see it sometimes in motion, sometimes at rest,
[Note 14] hence I infer that neither motion nor rest is essential to it, but motion, being an action, is the result of a cause of which rest is only the absence. When, therefore, there is nothing acting upon matter it does not move, and for the very reason that rest and motion are indifferent to it, its natural state is a state of rest.
[977:] I perceive two sorts of motions of bodies, acquired motion and spontaneous or voluntary motion. In the first the cause is external to the body moved, in the second it is within. I shall not conclude from that that the motion, say of a watch, is spontaneous, for if no external cause operated upon the spring it would run down and the watch would cease to go. For the same reason I should not admit that the movements of fluids are spontaneous, neither should I attribute spontaneous motion to fire which causes their fluidity.
[Note 15]
[978:] You ask me if the movements of animals are spontaneous; my answer is, "I cannot tell," but analogy points that way. You ask me again, how do I know that there are spontaneous movements? I tell you, "I know it because I feel them." I want to move my arm and I move it without any other immediate cause of the movement but my own will. In vain would any one try to argue me out of this feeling, it is stronger than any proofs; you might as well try to convince me that I do not exist.
[979:] If there were no spontaneity in men's actions, nor in anything that happens on this earth, it would be all the more difficult to imagine a first cause for all motion. For my own part, I feel myself so thoroughly convinced that the natural state of matter is a state of rest, and that it has no power of action in itself, that when I see a body in motion I at once assume that it is either a living body or that this motion has been imparted to it. My mind declines to accept in any way the idea of inorganic matter moving of its own accord, or giving rise to any action.
[980:] Yet this visible universe consists of matter, matter diffused and dead,
[Note 16] matter which has none of the cohesion, the organization, the common feeling of the parts of a living body, for it is certain that we who are parts have no consciousness of the whole. This same universe is in motion, and in its movements, ordered, uniform, and subject to fixed laws, it has none of that freedom which appears in the spontaneous movements of men and animals. So the world is not some huge animal which moves of its own accord; its movements are therefore due to some external cause, a cause which I cannot perceive, but the inner voice makes this cause so apparent to me that I cannot watch the course of the sun without imagining a force which drives it, and when the earth revolves I think I see the hand that sets it in motion.
[981:] If I must accept general laws whose essential relation to matter is unperceived by me, how much further have I got? These laws, not being real things, not being substances, have therefore some other basis unknown to me. Experiment and observation have acquainted us with the laws of motion; these laws determine the results without showing their causes; they are quite inadequate to explain the system of the world and the course of the universe. With the help of dice Descartes made heaven and earth; but he could not set his dice in motion, nor start the action of his centrifugal force without the help of rotation. Newton discovered the law of gravitation; but gravitation alone would soon reduce the universe to a motionless mass; he was compelled to add a projectile force to account for the elliptical course of the celestial bodies; let Newton show us the hand that launched the planets in the tangent of their orbits.
[982:] The first causes of motion are not to be found in matter; matter receives and transmits motion, but does not produce it. The more I observe the action and reaction of the forces of nature playing on one another, the more I see that we must always go back from one effect to another, till we arrive at a first cause in some will; for to assume an infinite succession of causes is to assume that there is no first cause. In a word, no motion which is not caused by another motion can take place, except by a spontaneous, voluntary action; inanimate bodies have no action but motion, and there is no real action without will. This is my first principle. I believe, therefore, that there is a will which sets the universe in motion and gives life to nature. This is my first dogma, or the first article of my creed.
[983:] How does a will produce a physical and corporeal action? I cannot tell, but I perceive that it does so in myself; I will to do something and I do it; I will to move my body and it moves, but if an inanimate body, when at rest, should begin to move itself, the thing is incomprehensible and without precedent. The will is known to me in its action, not in Its nature. I know this will as a cause of motion, but to conceive of matter as producing motion is clearly to conceive of an effect without a cause, which is not to conceive at all.
[984:] It is no more possible for me to conceive how my will moves my body than to conceive how my sensations affect my mind. I do not even know why one of these mysteries has seemed less inexplicable than the other. For my own part, whether I am active or passive, the means of union of the two substances seem to me absolutely incomprehensible. It is very strange that people make this very incomprehensibility a step towards the compounding of the two substances, as if operations so different in kind were more easily explained in one case than in two.
[985:] The doctrine I have just laid down is indeed obscure; but at least it suggests a meaning and there is nothing in it repugnant to reason or experience; can we say as much of materialism? Is it not plain that if motion is essential to matter it would be inseparable from it, it would always be present in it in the same degree, always present in every particle of matter, always the same in each particle of matter, it would not be capable of transmission, it could neither increase nor diminish, nor could we ever conceive of matter at rest When you tell me that motion is not essential to matter but necessary to it, you try to cheat me with words which would be easier to refute if there was a little more sense in them. For either the motion of matter arises from the matter itself and is therefore essential to it; or it arises from an external cause and is not necessary to the matter, because the motive cause acts upon it; we have got back to our original difficulty.
[986:] The chief source of human error is to be found in general and abstract ideas; the jargon of metaphysics has never led to the discovery of any single truth, and it has filled philosophy with absurdities of which we are ashamed as soon as we strip them of their long words. Tell me, my friend, when they talk to you of a blind force diffused throughout nature, do they present any real idea to your mind? They think they are saying something by these vague expressions--universal force, essential motion--but they are saying nothing at all. The idea of motion is nothing more than the idea of transference from place to place; there is no motion without direction; for no individual can move all ways at once. In what direction then does matter move of necessity? Has the whole body of matter a uniform motion, or has each atom its own motion.1 According to the first idea the whole universe must form a solid and indivisible mass; according to the second it can only form a diffused and incoherent fluid, which would make the union of any two atoms impossible. What direction shall be taken by this motion common to all matter? Shall it be in a straight line, in a circle, or from above downwards, to the right or to the left? If each molecule has its own direction, what are the causes of all these directions and all these differences? If every molecule or atom only revolved on its own axis, nothing would ever leave its place and there would be no transmitted motion, and even then this circular movement would require to follow some direction. To set matter in motion by an abstraction is to utter words without meaning, and to attribute to matter a given direction is to assume a determining cause. The more examples I take, the more causes I have to explain, without ever finding a common agent which controls them. Far from being able to picture to myself an entire absence of order in the fortuitous concurrence of elements, I cannot even imagine such a strife, and the chaos of the universe is less conceivable to me than its harmony. I can understand that the mechanism of the universe may not be intelligible to the human mind, but when a man sets to work to explain it, he must say what men can understand.
[987:] If matter in motion points me to a will, matter in motion according to fixed laws points me to an intelligence; that is the second article of my creed. To act, to compare, to choose, are the operations of an active, thinking being; so this being exists. Where do you find him existing, you will say? Not merely in the revolving heavens, nor in the sun which gives us light, not in myself alone, but in the sheep that grazes, the bird that flies, the stone that falls, and the leaf blown by the wind.
[988:] I judge of the order of the world, although I know nothing of its purpose, for to judge of this order it is enough for me to compare the parts one with another, to study their co-operation, their relations, and to observe their united action. I know not why the universe exists, but I see continually how it is changed; I never fail to perceive the close connection by which the entities of which it consists lend their aid one to another. I am like a man who sees the works of a watch for the first time; be is never weary of admiring the mechanism, though he does not know the use of the instrument and has never seen its face. I do not know what this is for, says he, but I see that each part of it is fitted to the rest, I admire the workman in the details of his work, and I am quits certain that all these wheels only work together in this fashion for some common end which I cannot perceive.
[989:] Let us compare the special ends, the means, the ordered relations of every kind, then let us listen to the inner voice of feeling; what healthy mind can reject its evidence? Unless the eyes are blinded by prejudices, can they fail to see that the visible order of the universe proclaims a supreme intelligence? What sophisms must be brought together before we fail to understand the harmony of existence and the wonderful co-operation of every part for the maintenance of the rest? Say what you will of combinations and probabilities; what do you gain by reducing me to silence If you cannot gain my consent And how can you rob me of the spontaneous feeling which, in spite of myself, continually gives you the lie? If organized bodies had come together fortuitously in all sorts of ways before assuming settled forms, if stomachs are made without mouths, feet without heads, hands without arms, imperfect organs of every kind which died because they could not preserve their life, why do none of these imperfect attempts now meet our eyes; why has nature at length prescribed laws to herself which she did not at first recognize? I must not be surprised if that which is possible should happen, and if the improbability of the event is compensated for by the number of the attempts. I grant this; yet if any one told me that printed characters scattered broadcast had produced the Æneid all complete, I would not condescend to take a single step to verify this falsehood. You will tell me I am forgetting the multitude of attempts. But how many such attempts must I assume to bring the combination within the bounds of probability? For my own part the only possible assumption is that the chances are infinity to one that the product is not the work of chance. In addition to this, chance combinations yield nothing but products of the same nature as the elements combined, so that life and organization will not be produced by a flow of atoms, and a chemist when making his compounds will never give them thought and feeling in his crucible.
[Note 17]
[990:] I was surprised and almost shocked when I read Neuwentit. How could this man desire to make a book out of the wonders of nature, wonders which show the wisdom of the author of nature? His book would have been as large as the world itself before he had exhausted his subject, and as soon as we attempt to give details, that greatest wonder of all, the concord and harmony of the whole, escapes us. The mere generation of living organic bodies is the despair of the human mind; the insurmountable barrier raised by nature between the various species, so that they should not mix with one another, is the clearest proof of her intention. She is not content to have established order, she has taken adequate measures to prevent the disturbance of that order.
[991:] There is not a being in the universe which may not be regarded as in some respects the common center of all, around which they are grouped, so that they are all reciprocally end and means in relation to each other, The mind is confused and lost amid these innumerable relations, not one of which is itself confused or lost in the crowd. What absurd assumptions are required to deduce all this harmony from the blind mechanism of matter set in motion by chance! In vain do those who deny the unity of intention manifested in the relations of all the parts of this great whole, in vain do they conceal their nonsense under abstractions, coordinations, general principles, symbolic expressions; whatever they do I find it impossible to conceive of a system of entities so firmly ordered unless I believe in an intelligence that orders them. It is not in my power to believe that passive and dead matter can have brought forth living and feeling beings, that blind chance has brought forth intelligent beings, that that which does not think has brought forth thinking beings.
[992:] I believe, therefore, that the world is governed by a wise and powerful will; I see it or rather I feel it, and it is a great thing to know this. But has this same world always existed, or has it been created? Is there one source of all things? Are there two or many? What is their nature? I know not; and what concern is it of mine? When these things become of importance to me I will try to learn them; till then 1 abjure these idle speculations, which may trouble my peace, but cannot affect my conduct nor be comprehended by my reason.
[993:] Recollect that I am not preaching my own opinion bat explaining it. Whether matter is eternal or created' whether its origin is passive or not, it is still certain that the whole is one, and that it proclaims a single intelligence; for I see nothing that is not part of the same ordered system, nothing which does not co-operate to the same end, namely, the conservation of all within the established order. This being who wills and can perform his will' this being active through his own power, this being, whoever he may be, who moves the universe and orders all things, is what I call God. To this name I add the ideas of intelligence, power, will, which I have brought together, and that of kindness which is their necessary consequence; but for all this I know no more of the being to which I ascribe them. He hides himself alike from my senses and my understanding; the more I think of him, the more perplexed I am; I know full well that he exists, and that he exists of himself alone; I know that my existence depends on his, and that everything I know depends upon him also. I see God everywhere in his works; I feel him within myself; I behold him all around me; but if I try to ponder him himself, if I try to find out where he is, what he is, what is his substance, he escapes me and my troubled spirit finds nothing.
[994:] Convinced of my unfitness, I shall never argue about the nature of God unless I am driven to it by the feeling of his relations with myself. Such reasonings are always rash; a wise man should venture on them with trembling, he should be certain that he can never sound their abysses; for the most insolent attitude towards God is not to abstain from thinking of him, but to think evil of him.
[995:] After the discovery of such of his attributes as enable me to conceive of his existence, I return to myself, and I try to discover what is my place in the order of things which he governs, and I can myself examine. At once, and beyond possibility of doubt, I discover my species; for by my own will and the instruments I can control to carry out my will, I have more power to act upon all bodies about me, either to make use of or to avoid their action at my pleasure, than any of them has power to act upon me against my will by mere physical impulsion; and through my intelligence I am the only one who can examine all the rest. What being here below, except man, can observe others, measure, calculate, forecast their motions, their effects, and unite, so to speak, the feeling of a common existence with that of his individual existence? What is there so absurd in the thought that all things are made for me, when I alone can relate all things to myself?
[996:] It is true, therefore, that man is lord of the earth on which he dwells; for not only does he tame all the beasts, not only does he control its elements through his industry; but he alone knows how to control it; by contemplation he takes possession of the stars which he cannot approach. Show me any other creature on earth who can make a fire and who can behold with admiration the sun. What! can I observe and know all creatures and their relations; can I feel what is meant by order, beauty, and virtue; can I consider the universe and raise myself towards the hand that guides it; can I love good and perform it; and should I then liken myself to the beasts? Wretched soul, it is your gloomy philosophy which makes you like the beasts; or rather in vain do you seek to degrade your-self; your genius belies your principles, your kindly heart belies your doctrines, and even the abuse of your powers proves their excellence in your own despite.
[997:] For myself, I am not pledged to the support of any system. 1 am a plain and honest man, one who is not carried away by party spirit, one who has no ambition to be head of a sect; I am content with the place where God has set me; I see nothing, next to God himself, which is better than my species; and if I had to choose my place in the order of creation, what more could I choose than to be a man!
[998:] I am not puffed up by this thought, I am deeply moved by it; for this state was no choice of mine, it was not due to the deserts of a creature who as yet did not exist. Can I behold myself thus distinguished without congratulating myself on this post of honor, without blessing the hand which bestowed it? The first return to self has given birth to a feeling of gratitude and thankfulness to the author of my species, and this feeling calls forth my first homage to the beneficent Godhead. I worship his Almighty power and my heart acknowledges his mercies. Is it not a natural consequence of our amour de soi to honor our protector and to love our benefactor'.
[999:] But when, in my desire to discover my own place within my species, I consider its different ranks and the men who fill them, where am I now? What a sight meets my eyes! Where is now the order I perceived? Nature showed me a scene of harmony and proportion; the human race shows me nothing but confusion and disorder. The elements agree together; men are in a state of chaos. The beasts are happy; their king alone is wretched. O Wisdom, where are thy laws? O Providence, is this thy rule over the world? Merciful God, where is thy Power? I behold the earth, and there is evil upon it.
[1000:] Would you believe it, dear friend, from these gloomy thoughts and apparent contradictions, there was shaped in my mind the sublime idea of the soul, which all my seeking had hitherto failed to discover? While I meditated upon man's nature, I seemed to discover two distinct principles in it; one of them raised him to the study of the eternal truths, to the love of justice, and of true morality, to the regions of the world of thought, which the wise delight to contemplate; the other led him downwards to himself, made him the slave of his senses, of the passions which are their instruments, and thus opposed everything suggested to him by the former principle. When I felt myself carried away, distracted by these conflicting motives, I said, No; man is not one; I will and I will not; I feel myself at once a slave and a free man; I perceive what is right, I love it, and I do what is wrong; I am active when I listen to the voice of reason; I am passive when I am carried away by my passions; and when I yield, my worst suffering is the knowledge that I might have resisted.
[1001:] Young man, hear me with confidence. I will always be honest with yon. If conscience is the creature of prejudice, I am certainly wrong, and there is no such thing as a proof of morality; but if to put oneself first is an inclination natural to man, and if the first sentiment of justice is moreover inborn in the human heart, let those who say man is a simple creature remove these contradictions and I will grant that there is but one substance.
[1002:] You will note that by this term substance I understand generally the being endowed with some primitive quality, apart from all special and secondary modifications. If then all the primitive qualities which are known to us can be united in one and the same being, we should only acknowledge one substance; but if there are qualities which are mutually exclusive, there are as many different substances as there are such exclusions. You will think this over; for my own part, whatever Locke may say, it is enough for me to recognize matter as having merely extension and divisibility to convince myself that it cannot think, and if a philosopher tells me that trees feel and rocks think
[Note 18] in vain will he perplex me with his cunning arguments; I merely regard him as a dishonest sophist, who prefers to say that stones have feeling rather than that men have souls.
[1003:] Suppose a deaf man denies the existence of sounds because he has never heard them. I put before his eyes a stringed instrument and cause it to sound in unison by means of another instrument concealed from him; the deaf man sees the chord vibrate. I tell him, "The sound makes it do that." "Not at all," says he, "the string itself is the cause of the vibration; to vibrate in that way is a quality common to all bodies." "Then show me this vibration in other bodies," I answer, "or at least show me its cause in this string." "I cannot," replies the deaf man; "but because I do not understand how that string vibrates why should I try to explain it by means of your sounds, of which I have not the least idea? It is explaining one obscure fact by means of a cause still more obscure. Make me perceive your sounds; or I say there are no such things."
[1004:] The more I consider thought and the nature of the human mind, the more likeness I find between the arguments of the materialists and those of 'the deaf man. Indeed, they are deaf to the inner voice which cries aloud to them, in a tone which can hardly be mistaken. A machine does not think, there is neither movement nor form which can produce reflection; something within thee tries to break the bands which confine it; space is not thy measure, the whole universe does not suffice to contain thee; thy sentiments, thy desires, thy anxiety, thy pride itself, have another origin than this small body in which thou art imprisoned.
[1005:] No material creature is in itself active, and I am active. In vain do you argue this point with me; I feel it, and it is this feeling which speaks to me more forcibly than the reason which disputes it. I have a body which is acted upon by other bodies, and it acts in turn upon them; there is no doubt about this reciprocal action; but my will is independent of my senses; I consent or I resist; I yield or I win the victory, and I know very well in myself when I have done what I wanted and when I have merely given way to my passions. I have always the power to will, but not always the strength to do what I will. When I yield to temptation I surrender myself to the action of external objects. When I blame myself for this weakness, I listen to my own will alone; I am a slave in my vices, a free man in my remorse; the feeling of freedom is never effaced in me but when I myself do wrong, and when I at length prevent the voice of the soul from protesting against the authority of the body.
[1006:] I am only aware of will through the consciousness of my own will, and intelligence is no better known to me. When you ask me what is the cause which determines my will, it is my turn to ask what cause determines my judgment; for it is plain that these two causes are but one; and if you understand clearly that man is active in his judgments, that his intelligence is only the power to compare and judge you will see that his freedom is only a similar power or one derived from this; he chooses between good and evil as he judges between truth and falsehood; if his judgment is at fault, he chooses amiss. What then is the cause that determines his will? It is his judgment. And what is the cause that deter-mines his judgment? It is his intelligence, his power of judging; the determining cause is in himself. Beyond that, I understand nothing.
[1007:] No doubt I am not free not to desire my own welfare, I am not free to desire my own hurt; but my freedom consists in this very thing, that I can will what is for my own good, or what I esteem as such, without any external compulsion. Does it follow that I am not my own master because I cannot be other than myself?
[1008:] The motive power of all action is In the will of a free creature; we can go no farther. It is not the word freedom that is meaning-less, but the word necessity. To suppose some action which is not the effect of an active motive power is indeed to suppose effects without cause, to reason in a vicious circle. Either there is no original impulse, or every original impulse has no antecedent cause, and there is no will properly so-called without freedom. Man is therefore free to act, and as such he is animated by an immaterial substance; that is the third article of my creed. From these three you will easily deduce the rest, so that I need not enumerate them.
[1009:] If man is at once active and free, he acts of his own accord; what he does freely is no part of the system marked out by Providence and it cannot be imputed to Providence. Providence does not will the evil that man does when he misuses the freedom given to him; neither does Providence prevent him doing it, either because the wrong done by so feeble a creature is as nothing in its eyes, or because it could not prevent it without doing a greater wrong and degrading his nature. Providence has made him free that he may choose the good and refuse the evil. It has made him capable of till. choice if he uses rightly the faculties bestowed upon him, but it has so strictly limited his powers that the misuse of his freedom cannot disturb the general order. The evil that man does reacts upon himself without affecting the system of the world, without preventing the preservation of the human species in spite of itself. To complain that God does not prevent us from doing wrong is to complain because he has made man of so excellent a nature, that he has endowed his actions with that morality by which they are ennobled, that he has made virtue man's birthright. Supreme happiness consists in self-content; that we may gain this self-content we are placed upon this earth and endowed with freedom, we are tempted by our passions and restrained by conscience. What more could divine power itself have done on our behalf? Could it have made our nature a contradiction, and have given the prize of well-doing to one who was incapable of evil? To prevent a man from wickedness, should Providence have restricted him to instinct and made him a fool? Not so, O God of my soul, I will never reproach thee that thou hast created me in thine own image, that I may be free and good and happy like my Maker!
[1010:] It is the abuse of our powers that makes us unhappy and wicked. Our cares, our sorrows, our sufferings are of our own making. Moral ills are undoubtedly the work of man, and physical ills would be nothing but for our vices which have made us liable to them. Has not nature made us feel our needs as a means to our preservation? Is not bodily suffering a sign that the machine is out of order and needs attention? Death. . .. Do not the wicked poison their own life and ours? Who would wish to live for ever? Death is the cure for the evils you bring upon yourself; nature would not have you suffer perpetually. How few sufferings are felt by man living in a state of primitive simplicity! His life is almost entirely free from suffering and from passion; he neither fears nor feels death; if he feels it, his sufferings make him desire it; henceforth it is no evil in his eyes. If we were but content to be ourselves we should have no cause to complain of our lot; but in the search for an imaginary good we find a thousand real ills. He who cannot bear a little Pam must expect to suffer greatly. If a man injures his constitution by dissipation, you try to cure him with medicine; the ill he fears is added to the ill he feels; the thought of death makes it horrible and hastens its approach; the more we seek to escape from it, the more we are aware of it; and we go through life in the fear of death, blaming nature for the evils we have inflicted on ourselves by our neglect of her laws.
[1011:] O Man! seek no further for the author of evil; thou art he. There is no evil but the evil you do or the evil you suffer, and both come from yourself. Evil in general can only spring from disorder, and in the order of the world I find a never-failing system. Evil in particular cases exists only in the mind of those who experience it; and this feeling is not the gift of nature, but the work of man himself. Pain has little power over those who, having thought little, look neither before nor after. Take away our fatal progress, take away our faults and our vices, take away man's handiwork, and all is well.
[1012:] Where all is well, there is no such thing as injustice. Justice and goodness are inseparable; now goodness is the necessary result of boundless power and of that self-love which is innate in all sentient beings. The omnipotent projects himself so to speak, into the being of his creatures. Creation and preservation are the everlasting work of power; it does not act on that which has no existence; God is not the God of the dead; he could not harm and destroy without injury to himself. The omnipotent can only will what is good.
[Note 19] Therefore he who is supremely good, because he is supremely powerful, must also be supremely just,. otherwise he would contradict himself; for that love of order which creates order we call goodness and that love of order which preserves order we call justice.
[1013:] Men say God owes nothing to his creatures I think he owes them all he promised when he gave them their being. Now to give them the idea of something good and to make them feel the need of it, is to promise it to them. The more closely I study myself, the more carefully I consider, the more plainly do I read these words, "Be just and you will be happy." It is not so, however, in the present condition of things, the wicked prospers and the oppression of the righteous continues. Observe how angry we are when this expectation is disappointed. Conscience revolts and murmurs against her Creator; she exclaims with cries and groans, "Thou hast deceived me."
[1014:] "I have deceived thee, rash soul! Who told thee this? Is thy soul destroyed? Hast thou ceased to exist? O Brutus! O my son! let there be no stain upon the close of thy noble life; do not abandon thy hope and thy glory with thy corpse upon the plains of Philippi. Why dost thou say, 'Virtue is naught,' when thou art about to enjoy the reward of virtue? Thou art about to die I Nay, thou shalt live, and thus my promise is fulfilled."
[1015:] One might judge from the complaints of impatient men that God owes them the reward before they have deserved it, that he is bound to pay for virtue in advance. Oh! let us first be good and then we shall be happy. Let us not claim the prize before we have won it, nor demand our wages before we have finished our work "It is net in the lists that we crown the victors in the sacred games," says Plutarch, "it is when they have finished their course."
[1016:] If the soul is immaterial, it may survive the body; and if it so survives, Providence is justified. Had I no other proof of the immaterial nature of the soul, the triumph of the wicked and the oppression of the righteous in this world would be enough to convince me. I should seek to resolve so appalling a discord in the universal harmony. I should say to myself, "All is not over with life, everything finds its place at death." I should still have to answer the question, "What becomes of man when all we know of him through our senses has vanished?" This question no longer presents any difficulty to me when I admit the two substances. It is easy to understand that what is imperceptible to those senses escapes me, during my bodily life, when I perceive through my senses only. When the union of soul and body is destroyed, I think one may be dissolved and the other may be preserved. Why should the destruction of the one imply the destruction of the other? On the contrary, so unlike in their nature, they were during their union in a highly unstable condition, and when this union comes to an end they both return to their natural state; the active vital substance regains all the force which it expended to set in motion the passive dead substance. Alas! my vices make me only too well aware that man is but half alive during this life; the life of the soul only begins with the death of the body.
[1017:] But what is that life? Is the soul of man in its nature immortal? I know not. My finite understanding cannot hold the infinite; what is called eternity eludes my grasp. What can I assert or deny, how can I reason with regard to what I cannot conceive? I believe that the soul survives the body for the maintenance of order; who knows if this is enough to make it eternal? However, I know that the body is worn out and destroyed by the division of its parts, but I cannot conceive a similar destruction of the conscious nature, and as I cannot imagine how it can die, I presume that it does not die. As this assumption is consoling and in itself not unreasonable, why should I fear to accept it?
[1018:] I am aware of my soul; it is known to me in feeling and in thought; I know what it is without knowing its essence; I cannot reason about ideas which are unknown to me. What I do know is this, that my personal identity depends upon memory, and that to be indeed the same self I must remember that I have existed, Now after death I could not recall what I was when alive unless I also remembered what I felt and therefore what I did; and I have no doubt that this remembrance will one day form the happiness of the good and the torment of the bad. In this world our inner conscious-ness is absorbed by the crowd of eager passions which cheat remorse. The humiliation and disgrace involved in the practice of virtue do not permit us to realize its charm. But when, freed from the illusions of the bodily senses, we behold with joy the supreme Being and the eternal truths which flow from him; when all the powers of our soul are alive to the beauty of order and we are wholly occupied in comparing what we have done with what we ought to have done, then it is that the voice of conscience will regain its strength and sway; then it is that the pure delight which springs from self-content, and the sharp regret for our own degradation of that self, will decide by means of overpowering feeling what shall be the fate which each has prepared for himself. My good friend, do not ask me whether there are other sources of happiness or suffering; I cannot tell; that which my fancy pictures is enough to console me in this life and to bid me look for a life to come. I do not say the good will be rewarded, for what greater good can a truly good being expect than to exist in accordance with his nature? But I do assert that the good will be happy, because their maker, the author of all justice, who has made them capable of feeling, has not made them that they may suffer; moreover, they have not abused their freedom upon earth and they have not changed their fate through any fault of their own; yet they have suffered in this life and it will be made up to them in the life to come. This feeling relies not so much on man's deserts as on the idea of good which seems to me inseparable from the divine essence. I only assume that the laws of order are constant and that God is true to himself.
[Note 20]
[1019:] Do not ask me whether the torments of the wicked will endure for ever, whether the goodness of their creator can condemn them to the eternal suffering; again, I cannot tell, and I have no empty curiosity for the investigation of useless problems. How does the fate of the wicked concern me? I take little interest in it All the same I find it hard to believe that they will be condemned to everlasting torments. If the supreme justice calls for vengeance, it claims it in this life. The nations of the world with their errors are its ministers. Justice uses self-inflicted ills to punish the crimes which have deserved them. It is in your own insatiable souls, devoured by envy, greed, and ambition, it is in the midst of your false prosperity, that the avenging passions find the due reward of your crimes. What need to seek a hell in the future life? It Is in the breast of the wicked.
[1020:] When our fleeting needs are over, and our mad desires are at rest' there should alto be an end of our passions and our crimes. Can pure spirits be capable of any perversity? Having need of nothing, why should they be wicked? If they are free from our gross senses, if their happiness consists in the contemplation of other beings, they can only desire what is good; and he who cease to be bad can never be miserable. This is what I am inclined to think though I have not been at the pains to come to any decision. 0 God, merciful and good, whatever thy decrees may be I adore them; if thou should t commit the wicked to everlasting punishment, I abandon my feeble reason to thy justice; but if the remorse of these wretched beings should in the course of time be extinguished, if their sufferings should come to an end. and if the same peace shall one day be the lot of all mankind, I give thanks to thee for this. Is not the wicked my brother? How often have I been tempted to be like him? let him be delivered from his misery and freed from the spirit of hatred that accompanied it; let him be as happy as I myself; his happiness, far from arousing my jealousy, will only increase my own.
[1021:] Thus it is that, in the contemplation of God in his works, and in the study of such of his attributes as it concerned me to know, I have slowly grasped and developed the idea, at first partial and imperfect, which I have formed of this Infinite Being. But if this idea has become nobler and greater it is also more suited to the human reason. As I approach in spirit the eternal light, I am confused and dazzled by its glory, and compelled to abandon all the earthly notions which helped me to picture it to myself. God is no longer corporeal and sensible; the supreme mind which rules the world is no longer the world itself; in vain do I strive to grasp his inconceivable essence. When I think that it is he that gives life and movement to the living and moving substance which controls all living bodies; when I hear it said that my soul is spiritual and that God is a spirit, I revolt against this abasement of the divine essence; as if God and my soul were of one and the same nature! is if God were not the one and only absolute being, the only really active, feeling, thinking, willing being, from whom we derive our thought, feeling, motion, will, our freedom and our very existence! We are free because he wills our freedom, and his inexplicable substance is to our souls what our souls are to our bodies. I know not whether he has created matter, body, soul, the world itself. The idea of creation confounds me and eludes my grasp; so far as I can conceive of it I believe it; but I know that he has formed the universe and all that is, that he has made and ordered all things. No doubt God is eternal; but can my mind grasp the idea of eternity? Why should I cheat myself with meaningless words? This is what I do understand; before things were -- God was; he will be when they are no more, and if all things come to an end he will still endure. That a being beyond my comprehension should give life to other beings, this is merely difficult and beyond my understanding; but that Being and Nothing should be convertible terms, this is indeed a palpable contradiction, an evident absurdity.
[1022:] God is intelligent, but how? Man is intelligent when he reasons, but the Supreme Intelligence does not need to reason; there is neither premise nor conclusion for him, there is not even a proposition. The Supreme Intelligence is wholly intuitive, it sees what is and what shall be; all truths are one for it, as all places are but one point and all time but one moment. Man's power makes use of means, the divine power is self-active. God can because he wills; his will is his power. God is good; this is certain; but man finds his happiness in the welfare of his kind, God's happiness consists in the love of order; for it is through order that he maintains what is, and unites each part in the whole. God is just; of this I am sure, it is a consequence of his goodness; man's injustice is not God's work, but his own; that moral justice which seems to the philosophers a presumption against Providence, is to me a proof of its existence. But man's justice consists in giving to each his due; God's justice consists in demanding from each of us an account of that which he has given us.
[1023:] If I have succeeded in discerning these attributes of which I have no absolute idea, it is m the form of unavoidable deductions, and by the right use of my reason; but I affirm them without understanding them, and at bottom that is no affirmation at all. In vain do I say, God is thus, I feel it, I experience it, none the more do I understand how God can be thus.
[1024:] In a word the more I strive to envisage his infinite essence the less do I comprehend it; but it is, and that is enough for me; the less I understand, the more I adore. I abase myself, saying, " Being of beings, I am because thou art; to fix my thoughts on thee is to ascend to the source of my being. The best use I can make of my reason is to resign it before thee; my mind delights, my weakness rejoices, to feel myself overwhelmed by thy greatness."
[1025:] Having thus deduced from the perception of objects of sense and from my inner consciousness, which leads me to judge of causes by my native reason, the principal truths which I require to know, I must now seek such principles of conduct as I can draw from them, and such rules as I must lay down for my guidance in the fulfillment of my destiny in this world, according to the purpose of my Maker. Still following the same method, I do not derive these rules from the principles of the higher philosophy, I find them in the depths of my heart, traced by nature in characters which nothing can efface. I need only consult myself with regard to what I wish to do; what I feel to be right is right, what I feel to be wrong is wrong; conscience is the best casuist; and it is only when we haggle with conscience that we have recourse to the subtleties of argument. Our first duty is towards ourself; yet how often does the voice of others tell us that in seeking our good at the expense of others we are doing ill? We think we are following the guidance of nature, and we are resisting it; we listen to what she says to our senses, and we neglect what she says to our heart; the active being obeys, the passive commands. Conscience is the voice of the soul, the passions are the voice of the body. It is strange that these voices often contradict each other? And then to which should we give heed? Too often does reason deceive us; we have only too good a right to doubt her; but conscience never deceives us; she is the true guide of man; it is to the soul what instinct is to the body;
[Note 21] he who obeys his conscience is following nature and he need not fear that he will go astray. This is a matter of great importance, continued my benefactor, seeing that I was about to interrupt him; let me atop awhile to explain it more fully.
[1026:] The morality of our actions consists entirely in the judgments we ourselves form with regard to them. If good is good, it must be good in the depth of our heart as well as in our actions; and the first reward of justice is the consciousness that we are acting justly. If moral goodness is in accordance with our nature, man can only be healthy in mind and body when he is good. If it is not so, and if man is by nature evil, he cannot cease to be evil without corrupting his nature, and goodness in him is a crime against nature. If he is made to do harm to his fellow-creatures, as the wolf is made to devour his prey, a humane man would be as depraved a creature as a pitiful wolf; and virtue alone would cause remorse.
[1027:] My young friend, let us look within, let us set aside all personal prejudices and see whither our inclinations lead us. Do we take more pleasure in the sight of the sufferings of others or their joys? Is it pleasanter to do a kind action or an unkind action, and which leaves the more delightful memory behind it? Why do you enjoy the theatre? Do you delight in the crimes you behold? Do you weep over the punishment which overtakes the criminal? They say we are indifferent to everything but self-interest; yet we find our consolation in our sufferings in the charms of friendship and humanity, and even in our pleasures we should be too lonely and miserable if we had no one to share them 'with us. If there is no such thing as morality in man's heart, what is the source of his rapturous admiration of noble deeds, his passionate devotion to great men? What connection is there between self-interest and this enthusiasm for virtue? Why should I choose to be Cato dying by his own hand, rather than Caesar in his triumphs? Take from our hearts this love of what is noble and you rob us of the joy of life. The mean-spirited man in whom these delicious feelings have been stifled among vile passions, who by thinking of no one but himself comes at last to love no one but himself, this man feels no raptures, his cold heart no longer throbs with joy, and his eyes no longer fill with the sweet tears of sympathy, he delights in nothing; the wretch has neither life nor feeling, he is already dead.
[1028:] There are many bad men in this world, but there are few of these dead souls, alive only to self-interest, and insensible to all that is right and good. We only delight in injustice so long as it is to our own advantage; in every other ease we wish the innocent to be protected. If we see some act of violence or injustice in town or country, our hearts are at once stirred to their depths by an instinctive anger and wrath, which bids us go to the help of the oppressed; but we are restrained by a stronger duty, and the law deprives us of our right to protect the innocent. On the other hand, if some deed of mercy or generosity meets our eye, what reverence and love does it inspire! Do we not say to ourselves, "I should like to have done that myself"? What does it matter to us that two thousand years ago a man was just or unjust? and yet we take the same interest in ancient history as if it happened yesterday. What a] e the crimes of Cataline to me? I shall not be his victim. Why then a have I the same horror of his crimes as if he were living now? We do not hate the wicked merely because of the harm they do to ourselves, but because they are wicked. Not only do we wish to be happy ourselves, we wish others to be happy too, and if this happiness does not interfere with our own happiness, it increases it. In conclusion, whether we will or not, we pity the unfortunate; when we see their suffering we suffer too. Even the most depraved are not wholly without this instinct, and it often leads them to self-contradiction. The highwayman who robs the traveler, clothes the nakedness of the poor; the fiercest murderer supports a fainting man.
[1029:] Men speak of the voice of remorse, the secret punishment of hidden crimes, by which such are often brought to light. Alas! who does not know its unwelcome voice? We speak from experience, and we would gladly stifle this imperious feeling which causes us such agony. Let us obey the call of nature; we shall see that her yoke is easy and that when we give heed to her voice we find a joy in the answer of a good conscience. The wicked fears and flees from her; he delights to escape from himself; his anxious eyes look around him for some object of diversion; without bitter satire and rude mockery he would always be sorrowful; the scornful laugh is his one pleasure. Not so the just man, who finds his peace within himself; there is joy not malice in his laughter, a joy which springs from his own heart; he is as cheerful alone as in company, his satisfaction does not depend on those who approach him; it includes them.
[1030:] Cast your eyes over every nation of the world; peruse every volume of its history: in the midst of all these strange and cruel forms of worship, among this amazing variety of manners and customs, you will everywhere find the same ideas of right and justice; everywhere the same principles of morality, the same ideas of good and evil. The old paganism gave birth to abominable gods who would have been punished as scoundrels here below, gods who merely offered, as a picture of supreme happiness, crimes to be committed and lust to be gratified. But in vain did vice descend from the abode of the gods armed with their sacred authority; the moral instinct refused to admit it into the heart of man. While the debaucheries of Jupiter were celebrated, the continence of Xenocrates was revered; the chaste Lucrece adored the shameless Venus; the bold Roman offered sacrifices to Fear; he invoked the god who mutilated his father, and he died without a murmur at the hand of his own father. The most unworthy gods were worshipped by the noblest men. The sacred voice of nature was stronger than the voice of the gods, and won reverence upon earth; it seemed to relegate guilt and the guilty alike to heaven.
[1031:] There is therefore at the bottom of our hearts an innate principle of justice and virtue, by which, in spite of our maxims, we judge our own actions or those of others to be good or evil; and it is this principle that I call conscience.
[1032:] But at this word I hear the murmurs of all the wise men so-called. Childish errors, prejudices of our upbringing, they exclaim in concert! There is nothing in the human mind but what it has gained by experience; and we judge everything solely by means of the ideas we have acquired. They go further; they even venture to reject the clear and universal agreement of all peoples, and to set against this striking unanimity in the judgment of mankind, they seek out some obscure exception known to themselves alone; as if the whole trend of nature were rendered null by the depravity of a single nation, and as if the existence of monstrosities made an end of species. But to what purpose does the skeptic Montaigne strive himself to unearth in some obscure corner of the world a custom which is contrary to the ideas of justice? To what purpose does he credit the most untrustworthy traveler, while he refuses to believe the greatest writers? A few strange and doubtful customs, based on local causes, unknown to us; shall these destroy a general inference based on the agreement of all the nations of the earth, differing from each other in all else, but agreed in this? O Montaigne, you pride yourself on your truth and honesty; be sincere and truthful, if a philosopher can be so, and tell me if there is any country upon earth where it is a crime to keep one's plighted word, to be merciful, helpful, and generous, where the good man is scorned, and the traitor is held in honor.
[1033:] Self-interest, so they say, induces each of us to agree for the common good. But how is it that the good man consents to this to his own hurt? Does a man go to death from self-interest? No doubt each man acts for his own good, but if there is no such thing as moral good to be taken into consideration, self-interest will only enable you to account for the deeds of the wicked; possibly you will not attempt to do more. A philosophy which could find no place for good deeds would be too detestable; you would find yourself compelled either to find some mean purpose, some wicked motive, or to abuse Socrates and slander Regulus. If such doctrines ever took root among us, the voice of nature, together with the voice of reason, would constantly protest against them, till no adherent of such teaching could plead an honest excuse for his partisanship.
[1034:] It is no part of my scheme to enter at present into metaphysical discussions which neither you nor I can understand, discussions which really lead nowhere. I have told you already that I do not wish to philosophize with you, but to help you to consult your own heart. If all the philosophers in the world should prove that I am wrong, and you feel that I am right, that is all I ask.
[1035:] For this purpose it is enough to lead you to distinguish between our acquired ideas and our natural feelings; for feeling precedes knowledge; and since we do not learn to seek what is good for us and avoid what is bad for us, but get this desire from nature, in the same way the love of good and the hatred of evil are as natural to us as our self-love. The decrees of conscience are not judgments but feelings. Although all our ideas come from without, the feelings by which they are weighed are within us, and it is by these feelings alone that we perceive fitness or unfitness of things in relation to ourselves, which leads us to seek or shun these things.
[1036:] To exist is to feel; our feeling is undoubtedly earlier than our intelligence, and we had feelings before we had ideas.
[Note 22] Whatever may be the cause of our being, it has provided for our preservation by giving us feelings suited to our nature; and no one can deny that these at least are innate. These feelings, so far as the individual is concerned, are amour de soi, fear, pain, the dread of death, the desire for comfort. Again, if, as it is impossible to doubt, man is by nature sociable, or at least fitted to become sociable, he can only be so by means of other innate feelings, relative to his kind; for if only physical well-being were considered. men would certainly be scattered rather than brought together. But the motive power of conscience is derived from the moral system formed through this twofold relation to himself and to his fellow-men. To know good is not to love it; this knowledge is not innate in man; but as soon as his reason leads him to perceive it, his conscience impels him to love it; it is this feeling which is innate.
[1037:] So I do not think, my young friend, that it is impossible to explain the immediate force of conscience as a result of our own nature, independent of reason itself. And even should it be impossible, it is unnecessary; for those who deny this principle, admitted and received by everybody else in the world, do not prove that there is no such thing; they are content to affirm, and when we affirm its existence we have quite as good grounds as they, while we have moreover the witness within us, the voice of conscience, which speaks on its own behalf. If the first beams of judgment dazzle us and confuse the objects we behold, let us wait till our feeble sight grows clear and strong, and in the light of reason we shall soon behold these very objects as nature has already showed them to us. Or rather let us be simpler and less pretentious; let us be content with the first feelings we experience in ourselves, since science always brings us back to these, unless it has led us astray.
[1038:] Conscience! Conscience! Divine instinct, immortal voice from heaven; sure guide for a creature ignorant and finite indeed, yet intelligent and free; infallible judge of good and evil, making man like to God! In thee consists the excellence of man's nature and the morality of his actions; apart from thee, I find nothing in myself to raise me above the beasts--nothing but the sad privilege of wandering from one error to another, by the help of an unbridled understanding and a reason which knows no principle.
[1039:] Thank heaven we have now got rid of all that alarming show of philosophy; we may be men without being scholars; now that we need not spend our life in the study of morality, we have found a less costly and surer guide through this vast labyrinth of human thought. But it is not enough to be aware that there is such a guide; we must know her and follow her. If she speaks to all hearts, how is it that so few give heed to her voice? She speaks to us in the language of nature, and everything leads us to forget that tongue. Conscience is timid, she loves peace and retirement; she is startled by noise and numbers; the prejudices from which she is said to arise are her worst enemies. She flees before them or she is silent; their noisy voices drown her words, so that she cannot get a hearing; fanaticism dares to counterfeit her voice and to inspire crimes in her name. She is discouraged by ill-treatment; she no longer speaks to us, no longer answers to our call; when she has been scorned so long, it is as hard to recall her as it was to banish her.
[1040:] How often in the course of my inquiries have I grown weary of my own coldness of heart! How often have grief and weariness poured their poison into my first meditations and made them hateful to me! My barren heart yielded nothing but a feeble zeal and a lukewarm love of truth. I said to myself: Why should I strive to find what does not exist? Moral good is a dream, the pleasures of sense are the only real good. When once we have lost the taste for the pleasures of the soul, how hard it is to recover it I How much more difficult to acquire it if we have never possessed it! If there were any man so wretched as never to have done anything all his life long which he could remember with pleasure, and which would make him glad to have lived, that man would be incapable of self-knowledge, and for want of knowledge of goodness, of which his nature is capable, he would be constrained to remain in his wickedness and would be for ever miserable. But do you think there is any one man upon earth so depraved that he has never yielded to the temptation of well-doing? This temptation is so natural, so pleasant, that it is impossible always to resist it; and the thought of the pleasure it has once afforded is enough to recall it constantly to our memory. Unluckily it is hard at first to find satisfaction for it; we have any number of reasons for refusing to follow the inclinations of our heart; prudence, so celled, restricts the heart within the limits of the self; a thousand efforts are needed to break these bonds. The joy of well-doing is the prize of having done well, and we must deserve the prize before we win it. There is nothing sweeter than virtue; but we do not know this till we have tried it. Like Proteus in the fable, she first assumes a thousand terrible shapes when we would embrace her, and only shows her true self to those who refuse to let her go.
[1041:] Ever at strife between my natural feelings, which spoke of the common weal, and my reason, which spoke of self, I should have drifted through life in perpetual uncertainty, hating evil, '6ving good, and always at war with myself, if my heart had not received further light, if that truth which determined my opinions had not also settled my conduct, and set me at peace with myself. Reason alone is not a sufficient foundation for virtue; what solid ground can be found? Virtue we are told is love of order. But can this love prevail over my love for my own well-being, and ought it so to prevail? Let them give me clear and sufficient reason for this preference. Their so-called principle is in truth a mere p laying with words: for I also say that vice is love of order, differently understood. Wherever there is feeling and intelligence, there is some sort of moral order. The difference is this: the good man orders his life with regard to all men; the wicked orders it for self alone. The latter centers all things round himself; the other measures his radius and remains on the circumference. Thus his place depends on the common center, which is God, and on all the concentric circles which are His creatures. If there is no God, the wicked is right and the good man is nothing but a fool.
[1042:] My child! May you one day feel what a burden is removed when, having fathomed the vanity of human thoughts and tasted the bitterness of passion, you find at length near at hand the path of wisdom, the prize of this life's labors, the source of that happiness which you despaired of. Every duty of natural law, which man's injustice had almost effaced from my heart, is engraven there, for the second time in the name of that eternal justice which lays these duties upon me and beholds my fulfillment of them. I feel myself merely the instrument of the Omnipotent, who wills what is good, who performs it, who will bring about my own good through the so-operation of my will with his own, and by the right use of my liberty. I acquiesce in the order he establishes, certain that one day I shall enjoy that order and find my happiness in it; for what sweeter joy is there than this, to feel oneself a part of a system where all is good? A prey to pain, I bear it in patience, remembering that it will soon be over, and that it results from a body which is not mine. If I do a good deed in secret, I know that it Is seen, and my conduct in this life is a pledge of the life to come. When I suffer injustice, I say to myself, the Almighty who does all things well will reward me: my bodily needs, my poverty, make the idea of death less intolerable. There will be all the fewer bonds to be broken when my hour comes.
[1043:] Why is my soul subjected to my senses, and imprisoned in this body by which it is enslaved and thwarted? I know not; have I entered into the counsels of the Almighty? But I may, without rashness, venture on a modest conjecture. I say to myself: If man's soul had remained in a state of freedom and innocence, what merit would there have been in loving and obeying the order he found established, an order which it would not have been to his advantage to disturb? He would be happy, no doubt, but his happiness would not attain to the highest point, the pride of virtue, and the witness of a good conscience within him; he would be but as the angels are, and no doubt the good man will be more than they. Bound to a mortal body, by bonds as strange as they are powerful, his care for the preservation of this body tempts the soul to think only of self, and gives it an interest opposed to the general order of things, which it is still capable of knowing and loving; then it is that the right use of his freedom becomes at once the merit and the reward; then it is that it prepares for itself unending happiness, by resisting its earthly passions and following its original direction.
[1044:] If even in the lowly position in which we are placed during our present life our first impulses are always good, if all our vices are of our own making, why should we complain that they are our masters? Why should we blame the Creator for the ills we have ourselves created, and the enemies we ourselves have armed against us? Oh, let us leave man unspoilt; he will always find it easy to be good and he will always be happy without remorse. The guilty, 'who assert that they are driven to crime, are liars as well as evil-doers; how is it that they fail to perceive that the weakness they bewail is of their own making; that their earliest depravity was the result of their own will; that by dint of wishing to yield to temptations, they at length yield to them whether they will or no and make them irresistible? No doubt they can no longer avoid being weak and wicked, but they need not have become weak and wicked. Oh, how easy would it be to preserve control of ourselves and of our passions, even in this life, if with habits still unformed, with a mind beginning to expand, we were able to keep to such things as we ought to know, in order to value rightly what is unknown; if we really wished to learn, not that we might shine before the eyes of others, but that we might be wise and good in accordance with our nature, that we might be happy in the performance of our duty. This study seems tedious and painful to us, for we do not attempt it till we are already corrupted by vice and enslaved by our passions. Our judgments and our standards of worth are determined before we have the knowledge of good and evil; and then we measure all things by this false standard, and give nothing its true worth.
[1045:] There is an age when the heart is still free, but eager, unquiet, greedy of a happiness which is still unknown, a happiness which it seeks in curiosity and doubt; deceived by the senses it settles at length upon the empty show of happiness and thinks it has found it where it is not. In my own case these illusions endured for a long time. Alas! too late did I become aware of them, and I have not succeeded in overcoming them altogether; they will last as long as this mortal body from which they arise. If they lead me astray, I am at least no longer deceived by them; I know them for what they are, and even when I give way to them, I despise myself; far from regarding them as the goal of my happiness, I behold in them an obstacle to it. I long for the time when, freed from the fetters of the body, I shall be myself, at one with myself, no longer torn in two, when I myself shall suffice for my own happiness. Meanwhile I am happy even in this life, for I make small account of all its evils, in which I regard myself as having little or no part, while all the real good that I can get out of this life depends on myself alone.
[1046:] To raise myself so far as may be even now to this state of happiness, strength, and freedom, I exercise myself in lofty contemplation. I consider the order of the universe, not to explain it by any futile system, but to revere it without ceasing, to adore the wise Author who reveals himself in it. I hold intercourse with him; I immerse all my powers in his divine essence; I am overwhelmed by his kindness, I bless him and his gifts, but I do not pray to him. What should I ask of him--to change the order of nature, to work miracles on my behalf? Should I, who am bound no love above all things the order which he has established in his wisdom and maintained by his providence, should I desire the disturbance of that order on my own account? No, that rash prayer would deserve to be punished rather than to be granted. Neither do I ask of him the power to do right; why should I ask what he has given me already. Has he not given me conscience that I may love the right, reason that I may perceive it, and freedom that I may choose it? If I do evil, I have no excuse; I do it of my own free will; to ask him to change my will is to ask him to do what he asks of me; it is to want him to do the work while I get the wages; to be dissatisfied with my lot is to wish to be no longer a man, to wish to be other than what I am, to wish for disorder and evil. Thou source of justice and truth, merciful and gracious God, in thee do I trust, and the desire of my heart is -- Thy will be done. When I unite my will with thine, I do what thou doest; I have a share in thy goodness; I believe that I enjoy beforehand the supreme happiness which is the reward of goodness.
[1047:] In my well-founded self-distrust the only thing that I ask of God, or rather expect from his justice, is to correct my error if I go astray, if that error is dangerous to me. To be honest I need not think myself infallible; my opinions, which seem to me true, may be so many lies; for what man is there who does not cling to his own beliefs; and how many men are agreed in everything? The illusion which deceives me may indeed have its source in myself, but it is God alone who can remove it. I have done all I can to attain to truth; but its source is beyond my reach; is it my fault if my strength fails me and I can go no further; it is for Truth to draw near to me.
[1048:] The good priest had spoken with passion; he and I were overcome with emotion. It seemed to me as if I were listening to the divine Orpheus when he sang the earliest hymns and taught men the worship of the gods. I saw any number of objections which might be raised; yet I raised none, for I perceived that they were more perplexing than serious, and that my inclination took his part. When he spoke to me according to his conscience, my own seemed to confirm what he said.
[1049:] "The novelty of the sentiments you have made known to me," said I, "strikes me all the more because of what you confess you do not know, than because of what you say you believe. They seem to be very like that theism or natural religion, which Christians profess to confound with atheism or irreligion which is their exact opposite. But in the present state of my faith I should have to ascend rather than descend to accept your views, and I find it difficult to remain just where you are unless I were as wise as you. That I may be at least as honest, I want time to take counsel with myself. By your own showing, the inner voice must be my guide, and you have yourself told me that when it has long been silenced it cannot be recalled in a moment. I take what you have said to heart, and I must consider it. If after I have thought things out, I am as convinced as you are, you will be my final teacher, and I will be your disciple till death. Continue your teaching however; you have only told me half what I must know. Speak to me of revelation, of the Scriptures, of those difficult doctrines among which I have strayed ever since I was a child, incapable either of understanding or believing them, unable to adopt or reject them."
[1050:] "Yes, my child," said he, embracing me, "I will tell you all I think; I will not open my heart to you by halves; but the desire you express was necessary before I could cast aside all reserve. So far I have told you nothing but what I thought would be of service to you, nothing but what I was quite convinced of. The inquiry which remains to be made is very difficult. It seems to me full of perplexity, mystery, and darkness; I bring to it only doubt and distrust. I make up my mind with trembling, and I tell you my doubts rather than my convictions. If your own opinions were more settled I should hesitate to show you mine; but in your present condition, to think like me would be gain.
[Note 23] Moreover, give to my words only the authority of reason; I know not whether I am mistaken. It is difficult in discussion to avoid assuming sometimes a dogmatic tone; but remember in this respect that all my assertions are but reasons to doubt me. Seek truth for yourself, for my own part I only promise you sincerity.
[1051:] "In my exposition you find nothing but natural religion; strange that we should need more! How shall I become aware of this need? What guilt can be mine so long as I serve God according to the knowledge he has given to my mind, and the feelings he has put into my heart? What purity of morals, what dogma useful to man and worthy of its author, can I derive from a positive doctrine which cannot be derived without the aid of this doctrine by the right use of my faculties? Show me what you can add to the duties of the natural law, for the glory of God, for the good of mankind, and for my own welfare; and what virtue you will get from the new form of religion which does not result from mine. The grandest ideas of the Divine nature come to us from reason only. Behold the spectacle of nature; listen to the inner voice. Has not God spoken it all to our eyes, to our conscience, to our reason? What more can man tell us? Their revelations do but degrade God, by investing him with passions like our own. Far from throwing light upon the ideas of the Supreme Being, special doctrines seem to me to confuse these ideas; far from ennobling them, they degrade them; to the inconceivable mysteries which surround the Almighty. they add absurd contradictions, they make man proud, intolerant, and cruel; instead of bringing peace upon earth, they bring fire and sword. I ask myself what is the use of it all, and I find no answer. I see nothing but the crimes of men and the misery of mankind.
[1052:] "They tell me a revelation was required to teach men how God would be served; as a proof of this they point to the many strange rites which men have instituted, and they do not perceive that this very diversity springs from the fanciful nature of the revelation. As soon as the nations took to making God speak, every one made him speak in his own fashion, and made him say what he himself wanted. Had they listened only to what God says in the heart of man, there would have been but one religion upon earth.
[1053:] "One form of worship was required; just so, but was this a matter of such importance as to require all the power of the Godhead to establish it? Do not let us confuse the outward forms of religion with religion itself. The service God requires is of the heart; and when the heart is sincere that is ever the same. It is a strange sort of conceit which fancies that God takes such an interest in the shape of the priest's vestments, the form of words he utters, the gestures he makes before the altar and all his genuflections. Oh, my friend, stand upright, you will still be too near the earth. God desires to be worshipped in spirit and in truth; this duty belongs to every religion, every country, every individual. As to the form of worship, if order demands uniformity, that is only a matter of discipline and needs no revelation.
[1054:] "These thoughts did not come to me to begin with. Carried away by the prejudices of my education, and by that dangerous vanity which always strives to lift man out of his proper sphere, when I could not raise my feeble thoughts up to the great Being, I tried to bring him down to my own level. I tried to reduce the distance he has placed between his nature and mine. I desired more immediate relations, more individual instruction; not content to make God in the image of man that I might be favored above my fellows, I desired supernatural knowledge; I required a special form of worship; I wanted God to tell me what he had not told others, or what others had not understood like myself.
[1055:] "Considering the point 1 had now reached as the common center from which all believers set out on the quest for a more enlightened form of religion, I merely found in natural religion the elements of all religion. I beheld the multitude of diverse sects which hold sway upon earth, each of which accuses the other of falsehood and error; which of these, I asked, is the right? Every one replied, 'My own;' every one said, 'I alone and those who agree with me think rightly, all the others are mistaken.' And how do you know that your sect is in the right? Because God said so. And how do you know God said so?
[Note 24] And who told you that God said it? My pastor, who knows all about it. My pastor tells me what to believe and I believe it; he assures me that any one who says anything else is mistaken, and I give no heed to them.
[1056:] "What! thought I, is not truth one; can that which is true for me be false for you? If those who follow the right path and those who go astray have the same method, what merit or what blame can be assigned to one more than to the other? Their choice is the result of chance; it is unjust to hold them responsible for it, to reward or punish them for being born in one country or another. To dare to say that God judges us in this manner is an outrage on his justice.
[1057:] "Either all religions are good and pleasing to God, or if there is one which he prescribes for men, if they will be punished for despising it, he will have distinguished it by plain and certain signs by which it can be known as the only true religion; these signs are alike in every time and place, equally plain to all men, great or small, learned or unlearned, Europeans, Indians, Africans,- savages. If there were but one religion upon earth, and if all beyond its pale were condemned to eternal punishment, and if there were in any corner of the world one single honest man who was not convinced by this evidence, the God of that religion would be the most unjust and cruel of tyrants.
[1058:] "Let us therefore seek honestly after truth; let us yield nothing to the claims of birth, to the authority of parents and pastors, but let us summon to the bar of conscience and of reason all that they have taught us from our childhood. In vain do they exclaim, 'Submit your reason;' a deceiver might say as much; I must have reasons for submitting my reason.
[1059:] "All the theology I can get for myself by observation of the universe and by the use of my faculties is contained in what I have already told you. To know more one must have recourse to strange means. These means cannot be the authority of men, for every man is of the same species as myself, and all that a man knows by nature I am capable of knowing, and another may be deceived as much as I; when I believe what he says, it is not because he says it but because he proves its truth. The witness of man is therefore nothing more than the witness of my own reason, and it adds nothing to the natural means which God has given me for the knowledge of truth.
[1060:] "Apostle of truth, what have you to tell me of which I am not the sole judge? God himself has spoken; give heed to his revelation. That is another matter. God has spoken, these are indeed words which demand attention. To whom has he spoken? He has spoken to men. Why then have I heard nothing? He has instructed others to make known his words to you. I understand; it is men who come and tell me what God has said. I would rather have heard the words of God himself; it would have been as easy for him and I should have been secure from fraud. He protects you from fraud by showing that his envoys come from him. How does he show this? By miracles. Where are these miracles? In the books. And who wrote the books? Men. And who saw the miracles? The men who bear witness to them. What! Nothing but human testimony! Nothing but men who tell me what others told them! How many men between God and me! Let us see, however, let us examine, compare, and verify. Oh! if God had but deigned to free me from all this labor, I would have served him with all my heart.
[1061:] "Consider, my friend, the terrible controversy in which I am now engaged; what vast learning is required to go back to the remotest antiquity, to examine, weigh, confront prophecies, revelations, facts, all the monuments of faith set forth throughout the world, to assign their date, place, authorship, and occasion. What exactness of critical judgment is needed to distinguish genuine documents from forgeries, to compare objections with their answers, translations with their originals; to decide as to the impartiality of witnesses, their common-sense, their knowledge; to make sure that nothing has been omitted, nothing added, nothing transposed, altered. or falsified; to point out any remaining contradictions, to determine what weight should be given to the silence of our adversaries with regard to the charges brought against them; how far were they aware of those charges; did they think them sufficiently serious to require an answer; were books sufficiently well known for our books to reach them; have we been honest enough to allow their books to circulate among ourselves and to leave their strongest objections unaltered?
[1062:] "When the authenticity of all these documents Is accepted, we must now pass to the evidence of their authors' mission; we must know the laws of chance, and probability, to decide which prophecy cannot be fulfilled without a miracle; we must know the spirit of the original languages, to distinguish between prophecy and figures of speech; we must know what facts are in accordance with nature and what facts are not, so that we may say how far a clever man may deceive the eyes of the simple and may even astonish the learned; we must discover what are the characteristics of a prodigy and how its authenticity may be established, not only so far as to gain credence, hut so that doubt may be deserving of punishment; we must compare the evidence for true and false miracles, and find sure tests to distinguish between them; lastly we must say why God chose as a witness to his words means which themselves require so much evidence on their behalf, as if he were playing with human credulity, and avoiding of set purpose the true means of persuasion.
[1063:] "Assuming that the divine majesty condescends so far as to make a man the channel of his sacred will, is it reasonable, is it fair, to demand that the whole of mankind should obey the voice of this minister without making him known as such? Is it just to give him as his sole credentials certain private signs, performed in the presence of a few obscure persons, signs which everybody else can only know by hearsay? If one were to believe all the miracles that the uneducated and credulous profess to have seen in every country upon earth, every sect would be in the right; there would be more miracles than ordinary events; and it would be the greatest miracle if there were no miracles wherever there were persecuted fanatics. The unchangeable order of nature is the chief witness to the wise hand that guides it; if there were many exceptions, I should hardly know what to think; for my own part I have too great a faith in God to believe in so many miracles which are so little worthy of him.
[1064:] "Let a man come and say to us: Mortals, I proclaim to you the will of the Most Highest; accept my words as those of him who has sent me; I bid the sun to change his course, the stars to range themselves in a fresh order, the high places to become smooth, the floods to rise up, the earth to change her face. By these miracles who will not recognize the master of nature? She does not obey impostors, their miracles are wrought in holes and corners, in deserts, within closed doors, where they find easy dupes among a small company of spectators already disposed to believe them. Who will venture to tell me how many eye-witnesses are required to make a miracle credible? What use are your miracles, performed if proof of your doctrine, if they themselves require so much proof? You might as well have let them alone.
[1065:] "There still remains the most important inquiry of all with regard to the doctrine
[Note 25] proclaimed; for since those who tell us God works miracles in this world, profess that the devil sometimes imitates them, when we have found the best attested miracles we have got very little further; and since the magicians of Pharaoh dared m the presence of Moses to counterfeit the very signs he wrought at God's command, why should they not, behind his back, claim a like authority? So when we have proved our doctrine by means of miracles, we must prove our miracles by means of doctrine, for fear lest we should take the devil's doings for the handiwork of God. What think you of this dilemma?
[1066:] "This doctrine, if it comes from God, should bear the sacred stamp of the godhead; not only should it illumine the troubled thoughts which reason imprints on our minds, but it should also offer us a form of worship, a morality, and rules of conduct in accordance with the attributes by means of which we alone conceive of God's essence. If then it teaches us what is absurd and unreasonable, if it inspires us with feelings of aversion for our fellows and terror for ourselves, if it paints us & God, angry, jealous, revengeful, partial, hating men, a God of war and battles, ever ready to strike and to destroy, ever speaking of punishment and torment, boasting even of the punishment of the innocent, my heart would not be drawn towards this terrible God, I would take good care not to quit the realm of natural religion to embrace such a religion as that; for you see plainly I must choose between them. Your God is not ours. He who begins by selecting & chosen people, and proscribing the rest of mankind, is not our common father; he who consigns to eternal punishment the greater part of his creatures, is not the merciful and gracious God revealed to me by my reason.
[1067:] "Reason tells me that dogmas should be plain, clear, and striking in their simplicity. If there is something lacking in natural religion, it is with respect to the obscurity in which it leaves the great truths it teaches; revelation should teach 'is these truths in a way which the mind of man can understand; it should bring them within his reach, make him comprehend them, so that he may believe them. Faith is confirmed and strengthened by understanding; the best religion is of necessity the simplest. He who hides beneath mysteries and contradictions the religion that he preaches to me, teaches me at the same time to distrust that religion. The God whom I adore is not the God of darkness, he has not given me understanding in order to forbid me to use it; to tell me to submit my reason is to insult the giver of reason. The minister of truth does not tyrannize over my reason, he enlightens it.
[1068:] "We have set aside all human authority, and without it I do not see how any man can convince another by preaching a doctrine contrary to reason. Let them fight it out, and let us see what they have to say with that harshness of speech which is common to both.
[1069:] "Inspiration. Reason tells you that the whole is greater than the part; but I tell you, in God's name, that the part is greater than the whole."Reason.. And who are you to dare to tell me that God contradicts himself? And which shall I choose to believe, God who teaches me, through my reason, the eternal truth, or you who, in his name, proclaim an absurdity?"Inspiration. Believe me, for my teaching is more positive; and I will prove to you beyond all manner of doubt that he has sent me."Reason. What! you will convince me that God has sent you to bear witness against himself l What sort of proofs will you adduce to convince me that God speaks more surely by your mouth than through the understanding he has given me?"Inspiration. The understanding he has given you! Petty, conceited creature! As if you were the first impious person who had been led astray through his reason corrupted by sin."Reason. Man of God, you would not be the first scoundrel who asserts his arrogance as a proof of his mission."Inspiration. What! do even philosophers call names?"Reason. Sometimes, when the saints set them the example."Inspiration. Oh, but I have a right to do it, for I am speaking on God's behalf."Reason. You would do well to show your credentials before you make use of your privileges."Inspiration. My credentials are authentic, earth and heaven will bear witness on my beh&1L Follow my arguments carefully, if you please."Reason. Your arguments! You forget what you are saying. When you teach me that my reason this leads me, do you not refute what it might have said on your behalf? He who denies the right of reason, must convince me without recourse to her aid. For suppose you have convinced me by reason, how am I to know that it is not my reason, corrupted by sin, which makes me accept what you say? Besides, what proof, what demonstration. can you advance, more self-evident than the axiom it is to destroy? It is more credible that a good syllogism is a lie, than that the part is greater than the whole."Inspiration:What a difference! There is no answer to my evidence; it is of a supernatural kind."Reason:Supernatural! What do you mean by the word? I do not understand it."Inspiration:I mean changes in the order of nature, prophecies, signs, and wonders of every kind."ReasonSigns and wonders! I have never seen anything of the kind."Inspiration Others have seen them for you. Clouds of witnesses -- the witness of whole nations. - -"Reason. Is the witness of nations supernatural?"Inspiration. No; but when it is unanimous, it is incontestable. "Reason. There is nothing so incontestable as the principles of reason. and one cannot accept an absurdity on human evidence. Once more, let us see your supernatural evidence, for the consent of mankind is not supernatural."Inspiration. Oh, hardened heart, grace does not speak to you."Reason. That is not my fault; for by your own showing, one must have already received grace before one is able to ask for it. Begin by speaking to me in its stead."Inspiration. But that is just what I am doing, and you will not listen. But what do you say to prophecy?"Reason. In the first place, I say I have no more heard a prophet than I have seen a miracle. In the next, I say that no prophet could claim authority over me."Inspiration.. Follower of the devil! Why should not the words of the prophets have authority over you?"Reason. Because three things are required, three things which will never happen: firstly, I must have heard the prophecy; secondly, I must have seen its fulfillment; and thirdly, it must be clearly proved that the fulfillment of the prophecy could not by any possibility have been a mere coincidence; for even if it was as precise, as plain, and clear as an axiom of geometry, since the clear-ness of a chance prediction does not make its fulfillment impossible, this fulfillment when it does take place does not, strictly speaking, prove what was foretold.
[1070:] "See what your so-called supernatural proofs, your miracles, your prophecies come to: believe all this upon the word of another, submit to the authority of men the authority of God which speaks to my reason. If the eternal truths which my mind conceives of could suffer any shock. there would be no sort of certainty for me; and far from being sure that you speak to me on God's behalf, I should not even be sure that there is a God.
[1071:] "My child, here are difficulties enough, but these are not all. Among so many religions, mutually excluding and proscribing each other, one only is true. if indeed any one of them is true. To recognize the true religion we must inquire into, not one, but all; and in any question whatsoever we have no right to condemn unheard.
[Note 26] The objections must be compared with the evidence; we must know what accusation each brings against the other, and what answers they receive. The plainer any feeling appears to us, the more we must try to discover why so many other people refuse to accept it. We should be simple, indeed, if we thought it enough to hear the doctors on our own side, in order to acquaint ourselves with the arguments of the other. Where can you find theologians who pride themselves on their honesty? Where are those who, to refute the arguments of their opponents, do not begin by making out that they are of little importance? A man may make a good show among his own friends, and be very proud of his arguments, who would cut & very poor figure with those same arguments among those who are on the other side. Would you find out for yourself from books? What learning you will need! What languages you must learn; what libraries you must ransack; what an amount of reading must be got through! Who will guide me in such a choice? It will be hard to find the best books on the opposite side in any one country, and all the harder to find those on all sides; when found they would be easily answered. The absent are always in the wrong, and bad arguments boldly asserted easily efface good arguments put forward with scorn. Besides books are often very misleading, and scarcely express the opinions of their authors. If you think you can judge the Catholic faith from the writings of Bossuet, you will find yourself greatly mistaken when you have lived among us. You will see that the doctrines with which Protestants are answered are quite different from those of the pulpit. To judge a religion rightly, you must not study it in the books of its partisans, you must learn it in their lives; this is quite another matter. Each religion has its own traditions, meaning, customs, prejudices, which form the spirit of its creed, and must be taken in connection with it.
[1072:] "How many great nations neither print books of their own nor read ours! How shall they judge of our opinions, or we of theirs? We laugh at them, they despise us; and if our travelers turn them into ridicule, they need only travel among us to pay us back in our own coin. Are there not, in every country, men of common-sense, honesty, and good faith, lovers of truth, who only seek to know what truth is that they may profess it? Yet every one finds truth in his own religion, and thinks the religion of other nations absurd; no all these foreign religions are not so absurd as they seem to us, or else the reason we find for our own proves nothing.
[1073:] "We have three principal forms of religion in Europe. One accepts one revelation, another two, and another three. Each hates the others, showers curses on them, accuses them of blindness, obstinacy, hardness of heart, and falsehood. What fair-minded man will dare to decide between them without first carefully weighing their evidence, without listening attentively to their arguments? That which accepts only one revelation is the oldest and seems the best established; that which accepts three is the newest and seems the most consistent; that which accepts two revelations and rejects the third may perhaps be the best, but prejudice is certainly against it. its inconsistency is glaring.
[1074:] "In all three revelations the sacred books are written in languages unknown to the people who believe in them. The Jews no longer understand 'Hebrew, the Christians understand neither Hebrew nor Greek; the Turks and Persians do not understand Arabic, and the Arabs of our time do not speak the language of Mohammed. Is not it a very foolish way of teaching, to teach people in an unknown tongue? These books are translated, you say. What an answer! How am I to know that the translations are correct, or how am I to make sure that such a thing as a correct translation is possible? If God has gone so far as to speak to men, why should he require an interpreter?
[1075:] "I can never believe that every man is obliged to know what is contained in books, and that he who is out of reach of these books, and of those who understand them, will be punished for an ignorance which is no fault of his. Books upon books! What madness! As all Europe is full of books, Europeans regard them as necessary, forgetting that they are unknown throughout three-quarters of the globe. Were not all these books written by men? Why then should a man need them to teach him his duty, and how did he learn his duty before these books were in existence? Either he must have learnt his duties for himself, or his ignorance must have been excused.
[1076:] "Our Catholics talk loudly of the authority of the Church; but what is the use of it all, if they also need just as great an array of proofs to establish that authority as the other seeks to establish their doctrine? The Church decides that the Church has a right to decide. What a well-founded authority! Go beyond it, and you are back again in our discussions.
[1077:] "Do you know many Christians who have taken the trouble to inquire what the Jews allege against them? If any one knows anything at all about it, it is from the writings of Christians. What a way of ascertaining the arguments of our adversaries! But what is to be done? If any one dared to publish in our day books which were openly in favor of the Jewish religion. We should punish the author, publisher, and bookseller.
[Note 27] This regulation is a sure and certain plan for always being in the right. It is easy to refute those who dare not venture to speak.
[1078:] "Those among us who have the opportunity of talking with Jews are little better off. These unhappy people feel that they are in our power; the tyranny they have suffered makes them timid; they know that Christian charity thinks nothing of injustice and cruelty; will they dare to run the risk of an outcry against blasphemy? Our greed inspires us with zeal, and they are so rich that they must be in the wrong. The more learned, the more enlightened they are, the more cautious. You may convert some poor wretch whom you have paid to slander his religion; you get some wretched old-clothes-man to speak, and he says what you want; you may triumph over their ignorance and cowardice, while all the time their men of learning are laughing at your stupidity. But do you think you would get off so easily in any place where they knew they were safe? At the Sorbonne it is plain that the Messianic prophecies refer to Jesus Christ. Among the rabbis of Amsterdam it is just as clear that they have nothing to do with him. I do not think I have ever heard the arguments of the Jews as to why they should not have a free state, schools and universities, where they can speak and argue without danger. Then alone can we know what they have to say.
[1079:] "At Constantinople the Turks state their arguments, but we dare not give ours; then it is our turn to cringe. Con we blame the Turks if they require us to show the same respect for Mohammed, in whom we do not believe, as we demand from the Jews with regard to Jesus Christ in whom they do not believe? Are we right? On what grounds of justice can we answer this question?
[1080:] "Two-thirds of mankind are neither Jews, Mahommedans, nor Christians; and how many millions of men have never heard the name of Moses, Jesus Christ, or Mohammed? They deny it; they maintain that our missionaries go everywhere. That is easily said. But do they go into the heart of Africa, still undiscovered, where as yet no European has ever ventured? Do they go to Eastern Tartary to follow on horseback the wandering tribes, whom no stranger approaches, who not only know nothing of the pope, but have scarcely heard tell of the Grand Lama? Do they penetrate into the vast continents of America, where there are still whole nations unaware that the people of another world have set foot on their shores' Do they go to Japan. where their intrigues have led to their perpetual banishment, where their predecessors are only known to the rising generation as skilful plotters who came with feigned zeal to take possession in secret of the empire? Do they reach the harems of the Asiatic princes to preach the gospel to those thousands of poor slaves? What have the women of those countries done that no missionary may preach the faith to them? Will they all go to hell because of their Reclusion?
[1081:] "If it were true that the gospel is preached throughout the world, what advantage would there be? The day before the first missionary set foot in any country, no doubt somebody died who could not hear him. Now tell me what we shall do with him? If there were a single soul in the whole world, to whom Jesus Christ had never been preached, this objection would be as strong for that man as for a quarter of the human race.
[1082:] "If the ministers of the gospel have made themselves heard among far-off nations, what have they told them which might reasonably be accepted on their word, without further and more exact verification? You preach to me God, born and dying, two thousand years ago, at the other end of the world, in some small town I know not where; and you tell me that all who have not believed this mystery are damned. These are strange things to be believed so quickly on the authority of an unknown person. Why did your God make these things happen so far off, if he would compel me to know about them? Is it a crime to be unaware of what is happening half a world away? Could I guess that in another hemisphere there was a Hebrew nation and a town called Jerusalem? You might as well expect me to know what was happening in the moon. You say you have come to teach me; but why did you not come and teach my father, or why do you consign that good old man to damnation because he knew nothing of all this? Must he be punished everlastingly for your laziness, he who was so kind and helpful, he who sought only for truth? Be honest; put yourself in my place; see if I ought to believe, on your word alone, all these incredible thing, which you have told me, and reconcile all this injustice with the just God you proclaim to me. At least allow me to go and see this distant land where such wonders, unheard of in my own country, took place; let me go and see why the inhabitants of Jerusalem put their God to death as a robber. You tell me they did not know he was God. What then shall I do, I who have only heard of him from your You say they have been punished, dispersed, oppressed, enslaved; that none of them dare approach that town. Indeed they richly deserved it; but what do its present inhabitants say of their crime in slaying their God? They deny him; they too refuse to recognize God as God. They are no better than the children of the original inhabitants.
[1083:] "What! In the very town where God was put to death, neither the former nor the latter inhabitants knew him, and you expect that I should know him, I who was born two thousand years after his time, and two thousand leagues away? Do you not see that before I can believe this book which you call sacred, but which I do not in the least understand, I must know from others than yourself when and by whom it was written, how it has been preserved, how it came into your possession, what they say about it in those lands where it is rejected, and what are their reasons for rejecting it, though they know as well as you what you are telling me? You perceive I must go to Europe, Asia, Palestine, to examine these things for myself; it would be madness to listen to you before that.
[1084:] "Not only does this seem reasonable to me, but I maintain that it is what every wise man ought to say in similar circumstances; that he ought to banish to a great distance the missionary who wants to instruct and baptize him all of a sudden before the evidence is verified. Now I maintain that there is no revelation against which these or similar objections cannot be made, and with more force than against Christianity. Hence it follows that if there is but one true religion and if every man is bound to follow it under pain of damnation, he must spend his whole life in studying, testing, comparing all these religions, in travelling through the countries in which they are established. No man is free from a man's first duty; no one has a right to depend on another's judgment. The artisan who earns his bread by his daily toil, the ploughboy who cannot read, the delicate and timid maiden, the invalid who can scarcely leave his hod, all without exception must study, consider, argue, travel over the whole world; there will be no more fixed and settled nations; the whole earth will swarm with pilgrims on their way, at great cost of time and trouble, to verify, compare, and examine for themselves the various religions to be found. Then farewell to the trades, the arts, the sciences of mankind, farewell to all peaceful occupations; there can be no study but that of religion, even the strongest, the most industrious the most intelligent, the oldest, will hardly be able in his last years to know where he is; and it will be a wonder if he manages to find out what religion he ought to live by, before the hour of his death.
[1085:] Do you want to compromise this method and give at least some weight to the authority of men? Immediately you will give in to it completely. If the son of a Christian does well to follow the religion of his father without any profound and impartial reflection, then why would the son of a Turk do wrong to follow his father's religion? I defy all the intolerant people of the world to answer this in a way that would satisfy a sensible man.
[1086:] "Hard pressed by these arguments, some prefer to make God unjust and to punish the innocent for the sins of their fathers, rather than to renounce their barbarous dogmas. Others get out of the difficulty by kindly sending an angel to instruct all those who in invincible ignorance have lived a righteous life. A good idea, that angel! Not content to be the slaves of their own inventions they expect God to make use of them also!
[1087:] "Behold, my son, the absurdities to which pride and intolerance bring us, when everybody wants others to think as he does, and everybody fancies that he has an exclusive claim upon the rest of mankind. I call to witness the God of Peace whom I adore. and whom I proclaim to you, that my inquires were honestly made; but when I discovered that they were and always would be unsuccessful, and that I was embarked upon a boundless ocean, I turned back, and restricted my faith within the limits of my primitive ideas. I could never convince myself that God would require such learning of me under pain of hell. So I closed all my books. There is one book which is open to every one--the book of nature. In this good and great volume I learn to serve and adore its Author. There is no excuse for not reading this book, for it speaks to all in a language they can understand. Suppose I had been born in a desert island, suppose I had never seen any man but myself, suppose I had never heard what took place in olden days in a remote corner of the world; yet if I use my reason, if I cultivate it, if I employ rightly the innate faculties which God bestows upon me, I shall learn by myself to know and love him, to love his works, to will what he wills, and to fulfil all my duties upon earth, that I may do his pleasure. What more can all human learning teach me?
[1088:] "With regard to revelation, if I were a more accomplished disputant, or a more learned person, perhaps I should feel its truth, its usefulness for those who are happy enough to perceive it; but if I find evidence for it which I cannot combat, I also find objections against it which I cannot overcome. There are so many weighty reasons for and against that I do not know what to decide, so that I neither accept nor reject it I only reject all obligation to be convinced of its truth; for this so-called obligation is incompatible with God's justice, and far from removing objections in this way it would multiply them, and would make them insurmountable for the greater part of mankind. In this respect I maintain an attitude of reverent doubt. I do not presume to think myself infallible; other men may have been able to make up their minds though the matter seems doubtful to myself; I am speaking for myself, not for them; I neither blame them nor follow in their steps; their judgment may be superior to mine, but it is no fault of mine that my judgment does not agree with it.
[1089:] "I own also that the holiness of the gospel speaks to my heart, and that this is an argument which I should be sorry to refute. Consider the books of the philosophers with all their outward show; how petty they are in comparison! Can a book at once so grand and so simple be the work of men? Is it possible that he whose history is contained in this book is no more than man? Is the tone of this book, the tone of the enthusiast or the ambitious sectary? What gentleness and purity in his actions, what a touching grace in his teaching, how lofty are his sayings, how profoundly wise are his sermons, how ready, how discriminating, and how just are his answers! What man, what sage, can live, suffer, and die without weakness or ostentation? When Plato describes his imaginary good man, overwhelmed with the disgrace of crime, and deserving of all the rewards of virtue, every feature of the portrait is that of Christ; the resemblance is so striking that it has been noticed by all the Fathers, and there can be no doubt about it. What prejudices and blindness must there be before we dare to compare the son of Sophronisca with the son of Mary. How far apart they are! Socrates dies a painless death, he is not put to open shame, and he plays his part easily to the last; and if this easy death had not done honor to his life, we might have doubted whether Socrates, with all his intellect, was more than a mere sophist. He invented morality, so they say; others before him had practiced it; he only said what they had done, and made use of their example in his teaching. Aristides was just before Socrates defined justice
[Note 28]; Leonidas died for his country before Socrates declared that patriotism was a virtue; Sparta was sober before Socrates extolled sobriety; there were plenty of virtuous men in Greece before he defined virtue But among the men of his own time where did Jesus find that pure and lofty morality of which he is both the teacher and pattern?
[Note 29]The voice of loftiest wisdom arose among the fiercest fanaticism, the simplicity of the most heroic virtues did honor to the most degraded of nations One could wish no easier death than that of Socrates, calmly discussing philosophy with his friends; one could fear nothing worse than that of Jesus, dying in torment, among the insults, the mockery, the curses of the whole nation. In the midst of these terrible sufferings, Jesus prays for his cruel murderers. Yes, if the life and death of Socrates are those of a philosopher, the life and death of Christ are those of a God. Shall we say that the gospel story is the work of the imagination? My friend, such things are not imagined; and the doings of Socrates, which no one doubts, are less well attested than those of Jesus Christ. At best, you only put the difficulty from you; it would be still more incredible that several persons should have agreed together to invent such a book, than that there was one man who supplied its subject matter. The ton6 and morality of this story are not those of any Jewish authors, and the gospel indeed contains characters so great, so striking, so entirely inimitable, that their invention would be more astonishing than their hero. With all this the same gospel is full of incredible things, things repugnant to reason, things which no natural man can understand or accept. What can you do among so many contradictions? You can be modest and wary, my child; respect in silence what you can neither reject nor understand, and humble yourself in the sight of the Divine Being who alone knows the truth.
[1090:] "This is the unwilling skepticism in which I rest; but this skepticism is in no way painful to me, for it does not extend to matters of practice, and I am well assured as to the principles underlying all my duties. I serve God in the simplicity of my heart; I only seek to know what affects my conduct. As to those dogmas which have no effect upon action or morality, dogmas about which so many men torment themselves, I give no heed to them. I regard all individual religions as so many wholesome institutions which prescribe a uniform method by which each country may do honor to God in public worship; institutions which may each have its reason m the country, the government, the genius of the people, or in other local causes which make one preferable to another In a given time or place. I think them all good alike, when God is served in a fitting manner. True worship is of the heart. God rejects no homage, however offered, provided it is sincere. Called to the service of the Church in my own religion, I fulfil as scrupulously as I can all the duties prescribed to me, and my conscience would reproach me if I were knowingly wanting with regard to any point. You are aware that after being suspended for a long time, have, through the influence of M. Mellarede, obtained permission to resume my priestly duties, as a means of livelihood. I used to say Mass with the levity that comes from long experience even of the most serious matters when they are too familiar to us; with my new principles I now celebrate it with more reverence; I dwell upon the majesty of the Supreme Being, his presence, the insufficiency of the human mind, which so little realizes what concerns its Creator. When I consider how I present before him the prayers of all the people in a form laid down for me, I carry out the whole ritual exactly; I give heed to what I say, I am careful not to omit the least word, the least ceremony; when the moment of the consecration approaches, I collect my powers, that I may do all things as required by the Church and by the greatness of this sacrament; I strive to annihilate my own reason before the Supreme Mind; I say to myself, Who art thou to measure infinite power? I reverently pronounce the sacramental words, and I give to their effect all the faith I can bestow. Whatever may be this mystery which passes. understanding, I am not afraid that at the day of judgment I shall be punished for having profaned it in my heart.
[1091:] Honored with the sacred ministry, though in its lowest ranks. I will never do or say anything which may make me unworthy to fulfil these sublime duties. I will always preach virtue and exhort men to well-doing; and so far as I can I will set them a good example. It will be my business to make religion attractive.; it will be my business to strengthen their faith in those doctrines which are really useful, those which every man must believe; but, please God, I shall never teach them to hate their neighbor, to say to other men, You will be damned; to say, No salvation outside the Church.
[Note 30] If I were in a more conspicuous position, this reticence might get me into trouble; but I am too obscure to have much to fear, and I could hardly sink lower than I am. Come what may, I will never blaspheme the justice of God, nor lie against the Holy Ghost.
[1092:] "I have long desired to have a parish of my own; it is still my ambition, but I no longer hope to attain it. My dear friend, I think there is nothing so delightful as to be a parish priest. A good clergyman is a minister of mercy, as a good magistrate is a minister of justice. A clergyman is never called upon to do evil; if he cannot always do good himself, it is never out of place for him to beg for others, and he often gets what he asks If he knows how to gain respect Oh! if I should ever have some poor mountain parish where I might minister to kindly folk, I should be happy indeed; for it seems to me that I should make my parishioners happy. I should not bring them riches, but I should share their poverty; I should remove from them the scorn and opprobrium which are harder to bear than poverty. I should make them love peace and equality, which often remove poverty, and always make it tolerable. When they saw that I was in no way better off than themselves, and that yet I was content with my lot, they would learn to put up with their fate and to be content like me. In my sermons I would lay more stress on the spirit of the gospel than on the spirit of the church; its teaching is simple, its morality sublime; there is little in it about the practices of religion, but much about works of charity. Before I teach them what they ought to do, I would try to practice it myself, that they might see that at least I think what I say. If there were Protestants in the neighborhood or in my parish, I would make no difference between them and my own congregation so far as concerns Christian charity; I would get them to love one another, to consider themselves brethren, to respect all religions, and each to live peaceably in his own religion. To ask any one to abandon the religion in which he was born is, I consider, to ask him to do wrong, and therefore to do wrong oneself. While we await further knowledge, let us respect public order; in every country let us respect the laws, let us not disturb the form of worship prescribed by law; let us not lead its citizens into disobedience; for we have no certain knowledge that it is good for them to abandon their own opinions for others, and on the other hand we are quite certain that it is a bad thing to disobey the law.
[1093:] "My young friend, I have now repeated to you my creed as God reads it in my heart; you are the first to whom I have told it; perhaps you will be the last. As long as there is any true faith left among men, we must not trouble quiet souls, nor scare the faith of the ignorant with problems they cannot solve, with difficulties which cause them uneasiness, but do not give them any guidance. But when once everything is shaken, the trunk must be preserved at the cost of the branches. Consciences, restless, uncertain, and almost quenched like yours, require to be strengthened and aroused; to set the feet again upon the foundation of eternal truth, we must remove the trembling supports on which they think they rest.
[1094:] "You are at that critical age when the mind is open to conviction, when the heart receives its form and character, when we decide our own fate for life, either for good or evil. At a later date, the material has hardened and fresh impressions leave no trace. Young man, take the stamp of truth upon your heart which is not yet hardened. If I were more certain of myself, I should have adopted a more decided and dogmatic tone; but I am a man ignorant and liable to error; what could I do? I have opened my heart fully to you; and I have told what I myself hold for certain and sure; I have told you my doubts as doubts, my opinions as opinions; I have given you my reasons both for faith and doubt. It is now your turn to judge; you have asked for time; that is a wise precaution and it makes me think well of you. Begin by bringing your conscience into that state in which it desires to see clearly; be honest with yourself. Take to yourself such of my opinions as convince you, reject the rest. You are not yet so depraved by vice as to run the risk of choosing amiss. I would offer to argue with you, but as soon as men dispute they lose their temper; pride and obstinacy come in, and there is an end of honesty My friend, never argue; for by arguing we gain no light for ourselves or for others. So far as I myself am concerned, I have only made up my mind after many years of meditation; here I rest, my conscience is at peace, my heart is satisfied. If I wanted to begin afresh the examination of my feelings, I should not bring to the task a purer love of truth; and my mind, which is already less active, would be less able to perceive the truth. Here I shall rest, lest the love of contemplation, developing step by step into an idle passion, should make me lukewarm in the performance of my duties, lest I should fall into my former skepticism without strength to 8truggle out of it. More than half my life is spent; I have barely time to make good use of what is left, to blot out my faults by my virtues. If I am mistaken, it is against my will. He who reads my inmost heart knows that I have no love for my blindness. As my own knowledge is powerless to free me from this blindness, my only way out of it is by a good life; and if God from the very stones can raise up children to Abraham, every man has a right to hope that he may be taught the truth, if he makes himself worthy of it.
[1095:] "If my reflections lead you to think as I do, if you share my feelings, if we have the same creed, I give you this advice: Do not continue to expose your life to the temptations of poverty and despair. nor waste it in degradation and at the mercy of strangers; no longer eat the shameful bread of charity. Return to your own country, go back to the religion of your fathers, and follow it in sincerity of heart, and never forsake it; it is very simple and very holy; I think there is no other religion upon earth whose morality is purer, no other more satisfying to the reason. Do not trouble about the cost of the journey, that will be provided for you. Neither do you fear the false shame of & humiliating return; we should blush to commit a fault, not to repair it. You are still at an age when all is forgiven, but when we cannot go on sinning with impunity. If you desire to listen to your conscience, a thousand empty objections will disappear at her voice. You will feel that, in our present state of uncertainty, it is an inexcusable presumption to profess any faith but that we were born into, while it is treachery not to practice honestly the faith we profess. If we go astray, we deprive ourselves of a great excuse before the tribunal of the sovereign judge. Will he not pardon the errors in which we were brought up, rather than those of our own choosing?
[1096:] "My son, keep your soul in such a state that you always desire that there should be a God and you will never doubt it. Moreover, whatever decision you come to, remember that the real duties of religion are independent of human institutions; that a righteous heart is the true temple of the Godhead; that in every land, in every sect, to love God above all things and to love our neighbor as ourself is the whole law; remember there is no religion which absolves us from our moral duties; that these alone are really essential, that the service of the heart is the first of these duties, and that without faith there is no such thing as true virtue.
[1097:] "Shun those who, under the pretence of explaining nature, sow destructive doctrines in the heart of men, those whose apparent skepticism is a hundredfold more self-assertive and dogmatic than the firm tone of their opponents. Under the arrogant claim, that they alone are enlightened, true,
[Note 31] honest, they subject us imperiously to their far-reaching decisions, and profess to give us, as the true principles of all things, the unintelligible systems framed by their imagination. Moreover, they overthrow, destroy, and trample under foot all that men reverence; they rob the afflicted of their last consolation in their misery; they deprive the rich and powerful of the sole bridle of their passions; they tear from the very depths of man's heart all remorse for crime, and all hope of virtue; and they boast, moreover, that they are the benefactors of the human race. Truth, they say, can never do a man harm. I think so too, and to my mind that is strong evidence that what they teach is not true.
[1098:] "My good youth, be honest and humble; learn how to be ignorant, then you will never deceive yourself or others. If ever your talents are so far cultivated as to enable you to speak to other men, always speak according to your conscience, without caring for their applause. The abuse of knowledge causes incredulity. The learned always despise the opinions of the crowd; each of them must have his own opinion. A haughty philosophy leads to atheism just as blind devotion leads to fanaticism. Avoid these extremes; keep steadfastly to the path of truth, or what seems to you truth, in simplicity of heart, and never let yourself be turned aside by pride or weakness. Dare to confess God before the philosophers; dare to preach humanity to the intolerant. It may be you will stand alone, but you will bear within you a witness which will make the witness of men of no account with you. Let them love or hate, let them read your writings or despise them; no matter. Speak the truth and do the right; the one thing that really matters is to do one's duty in this world; and when we forget ourselves we are really working for ourselves. My chill, self-interest misleads us; the hope of the just is the only sure guide."
[1099:] I have transcribed this document not as a rule for the sentiments we should adopt in matters of religion, but as an example of the way in which we may reason with our pupil without diverging from the method I have tried to establish. So long as we yield nothing to human authority, nor to the prejudices of one's country, the light of reason alone, in a natural institution, can lead us no further than to natural religion; and this is as far as I should go with Emile. If he must have any other religion, I have no right to be his guide; he must choose for himself.
[1100:] We are working in agreement with nature, and while it is shaping the physical man, we are striving to shape the moral man. But we do not make the same progress. The body is already as strong and vigorous as the soul is frail and delicate, and whatever can be done by human art, the body is always ahead of the mind. Until now all our care has been devoted to restraining the one and stimulating the other, so that the man might as far as possible be at one with himself. By developing what is natural, we have kept his growing sensibilities in check; we have controlled it by cultivating his reason. Objects of thought moderate the influence of objects of sense. By going back to the causes of things, we have drawn him away from the domination of the senses. It was simple to raise him from the study of nature to the search for the author of nature
[1101:] When we have reached this point, what a new hold we have over our pupil; what new ways of speaking to his heart! Then alone does he find a true interest in being good, in doing what is right when he is far from every human eye, and when he is not driven to it by law -- to be just before himself and God, to do his duty, even at the cost of his life, and to bear in his heart virtue, not only for the love of order which we all subordinate to the love of self, but for the love of the author of his being, a love which mingles with that same amour de soi -- so that he may finally enjoy the lasting happiness which the peace of a good conscience and the contemplation of that supreme being promise him in another life after he has used this life well. Go beyond this, and I see nothing but injustice, hypocrisy, and falsehood among men. Private interest, which in competition necessarily prevails over everything else, teaches all things to adorn vice with the mask of virtue. Let all other men do what is good for me at the cost of what is good for themselves; let everything relate to me alone; let the whole human race perish, if necessary, in suffering and want, to spare me a moment's pain or hunger. Such is the interior language of every non-believer who reasons. Yes, I shall always maintain that whoever says in his heart, "There is no God" but says otherwise out loud, is either a liar or a madman.
[1102:] Reader, it is all in vain; I perceive that you and I shall never see Emile with the same eyes. You will always picture him like your own young people -- hasty, petulent, flighty, wandering from feast to feast, from entertainment, never able to focus on anything. You smile when I expect to make a thinker, a philosopher, a young theologian, of an ardent, lively, eager, and fiery young man at the most impulsive period of youth. This dreamer, you say, is always in pursuing his dreams; when he gives us a pupil of his own making, he does not merely form him, he creates him, he makes him up out of his own head; and while believing he is following the steps of nature, he is getting further and further from her. But for me, when I compare my pupil with yours, I can scarcely find anything in common between them. Nurtured so differently, it is almost a miracle if they are alike in any way. Since his childhood was passed in the freedom they assume in youth, in his youth he begins to bear the rule they bore as children. This rule becomes hateful to them, they are sick of it, and they see in it nothing but their masters' tyranny; when they escape from childhood, they think they must shake off all constraint, they then make up for the prolonged restraint imposed upon them, as a prisoner, freed from his fetters, moves and stretches and flexeshis limbs.
[Note 32]
[1103:] Emile, in contrast, is proud to be a man and to submit to the constraints of his growing reason. His body, already well formed, no longer needs so much action, and begins to control itself, while his half-fledged mind tries its wings on every occasion. Thus the age of reason becomes for the one the age of license; for the other, the age of reasoning.
[1104:] Would you know which of the two is nearer to the order of nature? Consider the differences between those who are more or less removed from it. Observe young villagers and see if they are as undisciplined as yours. "Savages in their childhood," says the Sr. Le Beau," are seen always, and ever busy with sports that keep the body in motion; but scarcely do they reach adolescence than they become quiet and dreamy; they no longer devote themselves to games of skill or chance.
[Note 33]" Having been brought up in full freedom like young peasants and savages, Emile should behave like them and change as he grows up. The whole difference is that instead of merely being active in play or to secure food, he has in his work and in his games learned to think. Having reached this stage, and by this route, he is quite ready to enter upon the next stage to which I introduce him. The subjects I suggest arouse his curiosity -- because they are beautiful in themselves, because they are completely new to him, and because he is in a condition to understand them. Your young people, on the other hand, are weary and overdone with your stale lessons, your long sermons, and your eternal catechisms. Why should they not refuse to devote their minds to what has made them sad, to the heavy precepts that have been continually piled upon them, to meditations on the author of their being who has been shown as the enemy of their pleasures? All this has only inspired in them aversion, disgust; constraint has set them against it. What means will they use then they begin to choose for themselves? they need something new to please them; you must not repeat what they were told as children. It is the same thing with my pupil: when he is a man I speak to him as a man, and only tell him what is new to him. It is precisely because they are tedious to your pupils that he will find them to his taste.
[1105:] This is how I doubly gain time for him by retarding nature to the advantage of reason. But have I indeed retarded the progress of nature? No, I have only prevented the imagination from hastening it. I have employed another sort of teaching to counterbalance the precocious instruction which the young man receives from elsewhere. While the torrent of our institutions carries him along, to draw him towards the opposite direction by different institutions is not to remove him from his proper place but to keep him in it.
[1106:] Nature's true time comes at last, as come it must. Since man must die, he must reproduce himself, so that the species may endure and the order of the world continue. When by the signs I have spoken of you anticipate this critical moment, immediately abandon for ever your former tone. He is still your disciple, but not your pupil. He is your friend, he is a man; treat him as such from now on.
[1107:] What! Must I abdicate my authority when most I need it? Must I abandon the adult to himself at the moment when he least knows how to conduct himself, when he may fall into the greatest errors? Must I renounce my rights when it it is most important to him that I should exercise them? Your rights. Who tells you to renounce them? It is only now that they begin for him. Until now all you have gained has been won by force or guile; authority, the law of duty, were unknown to him. You had to constrain or deceive him to make him obey. But now with how many new chains you surround his heart. Reason, friendship, recognition, gratitude, a thousand bonds of affection, speak to him in a voice he cannot misunderstand. His ears are not yet dulled by vice, he is still sensitive only to the passions of nature. The first of these, which is amour de soi, delivers him to you; habit confirms it. If a momentary transport tears him from you, regret leads him back to you in an instant. The sentiment which attaches him to you is the only permanent sentiment; all the others pass and cancel each other out. Do not let him become corrupt, and he will always be docile; he will not begin to rebel till he is already perverted.
[1108:] I certainly admit that if by confronting head-on his growing desires you go and stupidly treat as crimes the new needs that are beginning to make themselves felt in him, you will not be listened to for long. But as soon as you abandon my method I cannot be answerable for the consequences. Remember that you are nature's minister; you will never be her enemy.
[1109:] But what shall we decide to do? You see no alternative but either to favor his inclinations or to combat them, to be his tyrant or his accomplice; and both of these may have such dangerous consequences that one must indeed hesitate between them.
[1110:] The first way to resolve this difficulty is to marry him off quickly. This is undoubtedly the safest and most natural expedient. I doubt, however, that it is either the best or the most useful. I will give my reasons later; meanwhile I admit that young people should marry when they reach a marriageable age. But this age comes before the proper time for them. It is we who have made them precocious; marriage should be postponed to maturity.
[1111:] If it were merely a case of listening to their wishes and following their lead it would be an easy matter. But there are so many contradictions between the rights of nature and the laws of society that to conciliate them we must continually make mistakes and equivocate. It requires much art to prevent social man from becoming totally artificial.
[1112:] For the reasons just stated, I consider that by the means I have indicated and others like them the ignorance of the desires and purity of the senses can be extended at least until the age of twenty. This is so true that among the Germans a young man who lost his virginity before that age was considered dishonored; and the writers justly attribute the vigor of constitution and the number of children among the Germans to the continence of these peoples during youth.
[1113:] This period may be prolonged still further, and a few centuries ago nothing was more common even in France. Among other well-known examples, Montaigne's father, a man no less scrupulous and true than strong and healthy, swore that he was still a virgin when he married at thirty three after having served served for a long time in the Italian wars. We may see in the writings of his son what vigor and gaity were shown by the father when he was over sixty. Certainly the contrary opinion depends rather on our own morals and our own prejudices than on the experience of the species as a whole.
[1114:] I may, therefore, leave to one side the experience of our youth; it proves nothing for those who have been educated in another fashion. Considering that nature has fixed no exact limits which cannot be advanced or postponed, I think one can, without going outside of its law, assume that under my care Emile has so far remained in his first innocence, and I see that this happy epoch is about to end. Surrounded by ever-increasing perils, he will escape me whatever I do. At the first chance, and this chance will not be slow to arrive, he is going to follow the blind instinct of his senses; one could bet a thousand to one that he will be lost. I have reflected on the morals of mankind too much not to be aware of the invincible influence of this first moment on the rest of his life. If I dissimulate and pretend to see nothing, he will take advantage of my weakness; believing he can fool me, he will despise me and I become an accomplice to his fall. If I try to get him back, the time is past; he no longer hears me; I become bothersome, hateful. intolerable to him; it will take him long to get rid of me. There is therefore only one reasonable course to take -- that is to make him accountable for his own actions to himself, to guarantee him at least from the surprises of error and to show him plainly the dangers that surround him. I have restrained him so far through his ignorance; now his restraint must be his own knowledge.
[1115:] This new instruction is important, and it will be useful to take up things where we left them. This is the time to present my accounts so to speak, to show him how his time and mine have been spent, to make known to him what he is and what I am; what I have done, and what he has done; what we owe to each other, all his moral relation, all the engagements that he has contracted, all those to which others have contracted with him; the stage he has reached in the development of his faculties, the road that remains to he traveled, the difficulties he will meet, and the way to overcome them; how I can still help him and how he must henceforward help himself; finally, the critical point where he now is, the new dangers that surround him, and all the solid reasons which should induce him to keep a close watch upon himself before listening to his growing desires.
[1116:] Remember that to guide a grown man you must take the counterpoint of all that you did to guide the child. Do not hesitate to speak to him of those dangerous mysteries which you have so carefully hidden from him up until now. Since he must become aware of them, it is important that he not learn them from another, nor from himself, but from you alone. Since he must from now on fight against them, let him know his enemy so that he may not be taken unawares.
[1117:] Young people who are found to be knowledgeable these matters without our knowing how they obtained their knowledge, have not obtained it with impunity. This indiscrete teaching, which can have no honorable object, at least stains the imagination of those who receive it and disposes them to the vices of their instructors. This is not all. Servants, by this means, insinuate themselves into the mind of the child, win his confidence, make him envision his tutor as a gloomy and stern person; and one of the favorite subjects of their secret colloquies is to slander him. When the pupil has got to this point, the tutor should retire; he has nothing good left to do.
[1118:] But why does the child choose special confidants? Because of the tyranny of those who control him. Why should he hide himself from them if he were not driven to it? Why should he complain if he had nothing to complain of? Naturally those who control him are his first confidants; you can see from his eagerness to tell them what he thinks that he feels he has only half thought till he has told his thoughts to them. You may be sure that when the child fears neither neither sermons nor reprimands from you, he will always tell you everything; and that no one will dare to tell him anything he must conceal from you, for they will know very well that he will tell you everything.
[1119:] What makes me most confident in my method is that when I follow its consequences as rigorously as possible, I find no situation in the life of my pupil that does not leave me some pleasing memory of him. Even when he is carried away by his ardent temperament or when he revolts against the hand that guides him, when he struggles and is on the point of escaping from me, I still find his original simplicity in his agitation and his anger. His heart as pure as his body. He has no more knowledge of pretence than of vice. Reproach and scorn have not made a coward of him; base fears have never taught him the art of concealment. He has all the indiscretion of innocence: he is absolutely out-spoken; he does not even know the use of deceit. Every impulse of his heart is betrayed either by word or look, and I often know what he is feeling before he is aware of it himself.
[1120:] So long as his heart is thus freely opened to me, so long as he delights to tell me what he feels, I have nothing to fear; the danger is not yet at hand. But if he becomes more timid, more reserved, if I perceive in his conversation the first signs of confusion and shame, then his instincts are beginning to develop; he is beginning to connect the idea of evil with these instincts. There is not a moment to lose, and if I do not hasten to instruct him, he will learn in spite of me.
[1121:] Some of my readers, even of those who agree with me, will think that it is only a question of a conversation with the young man at any time. Oh, but this is not the way the human heart is governed! What we say has no meaning unless we have prepared the moment for saying it. Before we sow we must till the ground. The seed of virtue is hard to grow, and a long period of preparation is required before it will take root. One reason why sermons have so little effect is that they are offered to everybody alike, without discrimination or choice. How can anyone imagine that the same sermon could be suitable for so many hearers, with their different dispositions, so unlike in mind, temper, age, sex, station, and opinion. There are perhaps not even two of them to whom what is addressed to everyone is really suitable; and all our affections are so transitory that perhaps there are not even two occasions in the life of any man when the same speech would have the same effect on him. Judge for yourself whether the time when the eager senses disturb the understanding and tyrannize over the will is the time to listen to the solemn lessons of wisdom. Therefore never reason with young men, even when they have reached the age of reason, unless you have first prepared the way. Most lectures miss their mark more through the master's fault than the disciple's. The pedant and the teacher say much the same; but the former says it at random, and the latter only when he is sure of its effect.
[1122:] As a somnambulist, wandering in his sleep, walks along the edge of a precipice, over which be would fall if he were awake, so my Emile, in the sleep of ignorance, escapes the perils which he does not see. Were I to wake him with a start, he might fall. Let us first try to withdraw him from the edge of the precipice, and then we will awake him to show him it from a distance.
[1123:] Reading, solitude, idleness. a soft and sedentary life, intercourse with women and young people, these are perilous paths for a young man, and these lead him constantly into danger. I divert his senses by other objects of sense. I trace another course for his spirits by which I distract them from the course they would have taken. It is by bodily exercise and hard work that I check the activity of the imagination, which was leading him astray. When the arms are hard at work, the imagination is quiet; when the body is very weary, the passions are not easily inflamed. The quickest and easiest precaution is to remove him from immediate danger. I first take him away from towns, away from things which might lead him into temptation. But that is not enough. In what desert, in what wilds, shall he escape from the thoughts which pursue him? It is not enough to remove dangerous objects; if I fail to remove the memory of them, if I fail to find a way to detach him from everything, if I fail to distract him from himself, I might as well have left him where he was.
[1124:] Emile has learned a trade, but this trade is not our main resource. He is fond of farming and understands it, but farming is not enough. The occupations he is acquainted with degenerate into routine; when he is engaged in them he is not really occupied; he is thinking of other things; head and hand are at work on different subjects. He must have some new occupation that has the interest of novelty -- an occupation that keeps him breathless, that pleases him, that provides exercise and hard work, an occupation that he may become passionate about, one to which he will devote himself entirely. Now the only one which seems to possess all these characteristics is hunting. If hunting is ever an innocent pleasure, if it is ever worthy of a man, it is now that one should have recourse to it. Emile is well-fitted to succeed in it. He is strong, skilful, patient, indefatigable. He is sure to acquire a taste for this sport. He will bring to it all the ardor of youth; in it he will lose, at least for a time, the dangerous inclinations which spring from softness. The hunt hardens the heart as well as the body; it accustoms one to the eight of blood and to cruelty. Diana is represented as the enemy of love, and the allegory is right. The languors of love are born of soft repose, and tender feelings are stifled by violent exercise. In the woods and fields, the lover and the sportsman are so diversely affected that they receive very different impressions from the same objects. The fresh shade, the green groves, the pleasant resting-places of the one are to the other but feeding grounds, or places where the quarry will hide or turn to bay. Where the lover hears the flute and the nightingale, the hunter hears the horn and the hounds. One pictures to himself the nymphs and dryads, the other sees the horses, the huntsman, and the pack. Take a country walk with one or other of these men; their different conversation will soon show you that the earth doesn't have a similar appeal for them, and that the turn of their ideas is as diverse as the choice of their pleasures.
[1125:] I understand how these tastes may be combined, and that at last men find time for both. But the passions of youth cannot be divided in this way. Give the youth a single occupation which he loves, and the rest will soon be forgotten. Varied desires come with varied knowledge, and the first pleasures we know are the only ones we desire for long enough. I would not want the Emile's whole youth spent killing animals, and I do not even profess to justify this ferociouos passion; it is enough for me that it serves to delay a more dangerous passion, so that he may listen to me calmly when I speak of it and give me time to describe it without stimulating it.
[1126:] There are moments in human life which can never be forgotten. Such is the time when Emile receives the instruction of which I am about to speak; it should influence him for the rest of his days. Let us try to engrave it on his memory so that it may never be erased. One of the faults of our age is to rely too much on bare reason, as if men were made of nothing but mind. By neglecting the language of signs which speak to the imagination we have lost the most energetic of languages. The influence of the spoken word is always weak, and we communicate to the heart through the eyes much more than through the ears. In wanting to give everything over to reason we have reduced our precepts to words; we have put nothing into actions. Reason alone is not active. Occasionally it restrains, more rarely it stimulates, and never has it done anything great. To always be reasoning is the mania of small minds. Strong souls have a very different language, and it is by this language that one cn persuade them and make them act.
[1127:] I observe that in modem times men only get a hold over others by force or self-interest, while the ancients did more by persuasion, by the affections of the soul, because they did not neglect the language of signs. All agreements were drawn up with solemnity in order to make them more inviolable. Before the reign of force, the gods were the magistrates of mankind. In their presence individuals made their treaties and alliances and pledged themselves to perform their promises. The book in which their archives were preserved consisted of the whole face of the earth. The pages of this book were the rocks, trees, piles of stones made sacred by these transactions and regarded with reverence by barbarous men and forever open to all their eyes. The well of the oath, the well of the living and seeing one; the ancient oak of Mamre, the stones of witness -- such were the simple but stately monuments of the sanctity of contracts. None dared to lay a sacrilegious hand on these monuments, and man's faith was more secure under the warrant of these dumb witnesses than it is to-day upon all the rigor of the laws.
[1128:] In government the august apparatus of royal power overawed its subjects. The symbols of dignity -- a throne, a scepter, a purple robe, a crown, a headdress -- these were sacred in the peoples sight. These respected signs made venerable to them the man whom they saw adorned with them. Without soldiers and without threats, he spoke and was obeyed. Now that we affect to abolish these signs,
[Note 34] what will the consequences of this contempt be? That the royal majesty is erased from all hearts, that kings can only gain obedience by the force of troops, and that the respect of their subjects is based only on the fear of punishment. Kings are spared the trouble of wearing their crowns, and our nobles escape from the outward signs of their status, but they must have a hundred thousand men at their command if their orders are to be obeyed. Though this may seem a finer thing, it is easy to see that in the long run they will gain nothing.
[1129:] What the ancients accomplished by means of eloquence is prodigious. But this eloquence did not merely consist in fine speeches carefully arranged; and it was most effective when the orator said least. The most startling speeches were expressed not in words but in signs; they were not uttered but shown. A thing beheld by the eyes kindles the imagination, stirs the curiosity, and keeps the mind on the alert for what we are about to say, and often enough the thing tells the whole story. Thrasybulus and Tarquin cutting off the heads of the poppies, Alexander placing his seal on the lips of his favorite, Diogenes marching before Zeno -- do not these speak more plainly than if they had uttered long orations? What flow of words could have expressed the ideas as clearly? Darius, in the course of the Scythian war, received from the king of the Scythians a bird, a frog, a mouse, and five arrows. The ambassador deposited this gift and retired without a word. In our days he would have been taken for a madman. This terrible speech was understood, and Darius withdrew to his own country with what speed he could. Substitute a letter for these symbols and the more threatening it was the less terror it would inspire; it would have been merely a piece of bluff, to which Darius would have paid no attention.
[1130:] What close attention the Romans gave to the language of signs! Different ages and different ranks had their appropriate garments, toga, tunic, patrician robes, fringes and borders, seats of honor, lictors, rods and axes, crowns of gold, crowns of leaves, crowns of flowers, ovations, triumphs. Everything had its pomp, its observances, its ceremonial, and all these spoke to the heart of the citizens. The state regarded it as a matter of importance that the populace should assemble in one place rather than another, that they should or should not behold the Capitol, that they should or should not turn towards the Senate, that this day or that should be chosen for their deliberations. The accused wore a special dress, so did the candidates for election. Warriors did not boast of their exploits; they showed their scars. I can imagine one of our orators at the death of Caesar exhausting all the commonplaces of rhetoric to give a pathetic description of his wounds, his blood, his dead body. Anthony was an orator, but he said none of this; he showed the murdered Caesar. What rhetoric that was!
[1131:] But this digression, like many others, is drawing me unawares away from my subject; and my digressions are too frequent to be borne with patience. I therefore return to the point.
[1132:] Do not reason drily with youth. Clothe your reason with a body, if you want to make it felt. Make the language of the mind pass through the language of the heart so that it may be understood. I say again: cold arguments can influence our opinions but not our actions. They set us thinking, not doing. They show us what we ought to think, not what we ought to do. If this is true of men, it is all the truer of young people who are still enwrapped in their senses and cannot think otherwise than they imagine.
[1133:] Even after the preparations of which I have spoken, I shall take good care not to go all of a sudden to Emile's room and preach a long and heavy sermon on the subject in which he is to be instructed. I shall begin by rousing his imagination. I shall choose the time, place. and surroundings most favorable to the impression I wish to make. I shall, so to speak, summon all nature as witness to our conversations. I shall call upon the eternal Being, the Creator of nature, to bear witness to the truth of my discourse. I will put him as a judge between Emile and myself. I will make the rocks, the woods, the mountains round about us, the monuments of his promises and mine. I will put into my eyes, voice, and gesture the enthusiasm and the ardor I wish to inspire in him. Then I will speak and he will listen, and I will be tender towards him and he will be moved. By concentrating on the sanctity of my dities I will make his more respectable. I will animate the force of reason with images and figures. I will not be long-winded and discursive with speeches or cold precepts but will be abundant with feelings. My reason shall be grave and serious, but my heart will never have said enough. It is then in showing him everything I have done for him that I will show him what he has done for me; he will see in my tender affection the reason of all my care. What a surprise and what agitation am I going to give him by changing so suddenly my language! Instead of shriveling up his soul by always talking of his own interests, I will from now on speak of my own and he will be all the more more touched by this. I will kindle in his young heart all the sentiments of friendship, generosity, and gratitude which I have already called into being and that are so sweet to cultivate. I will press him to my breast and let fall on him tears of tenderness. I will say to him: "You are my treasure, my child, my work. My happiness depends on yours. If you frustrate my hopes you rob me of twenty years of my life and you become the sorrow of my old age." This is the way to make oneself heard and to engrave in the depths of his heart the memory of what one tells him.
[1134:] Until now I have tried to give examples of the way in which a tutor should instruct his pupil in cases of difficulty. I have tried to do so in this case; but after many attempts I have abandoned the task, convinced that the French language is too precious to permit in print the plainness of speech required for the first lessons in certain subjects.
[1135:] They say that the French language is the most pure of languages. For my own part I think it the most obscene. For it seems to me that the purity of a language does not consist in carefully avoiding indecent expressions but m having none. Indeed, if we are to avoid them, they must be in our thoughts, and there is no language in which it is so difficult to speak with purity on every subject than French. The reader is always quicker to detect than the author to avoid a gross meaning, and he is shocked and startled by everything. How can what is heard by impure ears avoid coarseness? On the other hand, a nation whose morals are pure has fit terms for everything, and these terms are always right because they are rightly used. One could not imagine more modest language than that of the Bible, just because of its plainness of speech. The same things translated into French would become immodest. What I ought to say to Emile will sound pure and honorable to him; but to make the same impression in print would demand a like purity of heart in the reader.
[1136:] I should even think that reflections on true purity of discourse and the false delicacy of vice might find a useful place in the conversations about morality that this subject brings us to. For by learning the language of plain-spoken goodness he must also learn the language of decency, and he must know why the two are so different. However this may be, I maintain that if instead of the empty precepts which are prematurely dinned into the ears of children, only to be scoffed at when the time comes when they might prove useful, if instead of this we wait, if we prepare the moment to make oneself heard, if we then expose him to the laws of nature in all their truth, if we show him the sanction of these same laws in the physical and moral ills that their infraction brings down upon the guilty, if while we speak to him of this inconceivable mystery of generation, we join to the idea of the pleasure which the Author of nature has given to this act the idea of the exclusive affection which makes it delicious, the idea of the duties of faithfulness, of the modesty which surrounds it and redoubles its charm while fulfilling its purpose; if we paint to him marriage, not only as the sweetest form of society but also as the most inviolable and sacred of contracts; if we tell him forcefully all the reasons which make such a sacred tie respectable to all men and cover with hatred and curses upon him who ever dares to dishonor it; if we give him a striking and true picture of the horrors of debauch, of its stupid brutality, of the gradual decline by which a first act of disorder leads to all the rest and at last drags to his ruin anyone who falls into it; if, I say, we give him proofs that on a desire for chastity depends health, strength, courage, the virtues, even love itself and all that is truly good for man -- I maintain that this chastity will be so dear and so desirable in his eyes that his mind will be ready to receive our teaching as to the way to preserve it. For so long as we are chaste we respect chastity; it is only when we have lost it that we scorn it.
[1137:] It is not true that the inclination to evil is beyond our control, and that we cannot overcome it until we have acquired the habit of yielding to it. Aurelius Victor says that many men were mad enough to purchase a night with Cleopatra at the price of their life, and this is not incredible in the madness of passion. But let us suppose the maddest of men, the man who has his senses least under control. Let him see the preparations for his death, let him realize that he will certainly die in torment a quarter of an hour later; not only would that man, from that time forward, become able to resist temptation, he would even find it easy to do so. The terrible picture with which they are associated will soon distract his attention from these temptations, and when they are continually put aside they will cease to recur. It is only our lukewarm will that causes our weakness, and we always have strength to perform what we strongly desire. "Volenti nihil difficile!" Oh! if only we hated vice as much as we love life, we would abstain as easily from a pleasant crime as from a deadly poison in a delicious dish.
[1138:] How is it that you fail to perceive that if all the lessons given to a young man on this subject have no effect, it is because they are not adapted to his age, and that it is important at every age to dress reason in forms that make him love it? Speak to him seriously if necessary, but make sure that what you say to him always have an attraction that forces him to listen. Do not oppose his wishes drily; do not stifle his imagination but guide it so as to avoid creating perversities. Speak to him of love, of women, of pleasure; let him find in your conversation a charm that flatters his young heart; spare nothing in order to become his confidant. Under this name alone will you really be his master. Then you need not fear he will find your conversation boring; he will make you talk more than you want.
[1139:] If I have managed to take all the requisite precautions in accordance with these maxims and have said the right things to Emile at the age he has now reached, I am quite convinced that he will come of his own accord to the point to which I would lead him and will eagerly confide himself to my care. When he sees the dangers by which he is surrounded, he will say to me with all the ardor of youth, "Oh, my friend, my protector, my master! Take back the authority you would like to lay aside at the very time when I most need it. Until now you had this power because of my weakness. Now you have it by my own will, and it will be all the more sacred to me. Protect me from the enemies that beseige me, and above all from those that I carry within me and which can betray me, Watch over your work, that it may still be worthy of you. I wish to obey your laws -- I wish to always; that is my constant will. If I ever disobey you, it will be in spite of myself. Make me free by protecting me against the passions which do me violence. Prevent me from being their slave and force me to be my own master by obeying not my senses but my reason."
[1140:] When you have led your pupil this point (and if you do not get this far it will be your own fault), beware of taking him too readily at his word, in case your rule should seem too strict to him and in case he should think he has a right to escape from it by accusing you of taking him by surprise. This is the time for reserve and seriousness; and this attitude will have all the more effect upon him seeing that it is the first time you have adopted it towards him.
[1141:] Accordingly you may say to him: "Young man, you take painful engagements lightly; you must understand what they mean before you have a right to make them. You do not know with what furor the senses drag those like you into the abyss of vice masquerading as pleasure. You do not have a base soul, that I know; and you will never break your faith. But how often will you repent of having given it! How often will you curse your friend, when, in order to guard you from the ills which threaten you, he finds himself forced to tear your heart! Like Ulysses who, hearing the song of the Sirens, cried aloud to his rowers to unchain him, when you are seduced by the attractions of pleasure you will want to break the chains that bind you; you will trouble me with your complaints, you will reproach me as a tyrant when I have your welfare most at heart. When I am trying to make you happy, I shall incur your hatred. Oh my Emile, I can never bear to be hateful to you; this is too heavy a price to pay even for your happiness. My good young man, do you not see that when you oblige to obey me, you oblige me to be your guide, to forget myself in my devotion to you, to refuse to listen to your murmurs and complaints, to combat unceasingly your wishes and my own? You impose a heavier burden on me than on yourself. Before either of us undertakes such a task, let us count our resources. Take your time, give me time to consider, and be sure that the slower we are to promise, the more faithfully will our promises be kept."
[1142:] You may be sure that the more difficulty he finds in getting your promise the easier you will find it to carry it out. It is important that the young man feel that he is promising much, and that you are promising still more. When the moment has come, when he has, so to say, signed the contract, then change your tone, and make your rule as gentle as you said it would be severe. Say to him, "My young friend, it is experience that you lack; but I have taken care that you do not lack reason. You are ready to see the motives of my conduct in every respect; to do this you need only wait till you are free from excitement. Always obey me first, and then ask the reasons for my commands. I am always ready to give my reasons so soon as you are ready to listen to them, and I shall never be afraid to make you the judge between us. You promise to be docile, and I promise only to use this docility only to make you the happiest of men. For proof of this I have the life you have lived until now. Find me any one of your age who has led as sweet a life as yours, and I promise you nothing more."
[1143:] When my authority is firmly established, my first care will be to avoid the necessity of using it. I will spare no pains to become more and more firmly established in his confidence, to make myself the confidant of his heart and the arbiter of his pleasures. Far from combating the inclinations of his age, I will consult them that I may be their master. I will look at things from his point of view in order to direct him. I will not seek a remote distant good at the cost of his present happiness. I do not want him to be happy just once but always, if that is possible.
[1144:] Those who desire to guide young people rightly and to preserve them from the snares of sense give them a disgust for love and would willingly make the very thought of it a crime, as if love were made for old people. All these mistaken lessons that the heart gives the lie to will fail to have the desired effect. The young man, guided by a surer instinct, secretely laughs to himself over the gloomy maxims that he pretends to accept and only awaits the chance of disregarding them. All of that goes against nature. By following the opposite route I reach more surely at the same goal. I will not be afraid to flatter the sweet sentiment for which he is so eager. I will paint it as the supreme joy of life, because in effect it is. When I picture it to him, I desire that he shall give himself up to it. By making him feel the charm which the union of hearts adds to the delights of sense, I will inspire him with a disgust for libertinism; I will make him wise by making him amorous.
[1145:] How narrow-minded to see nothing in the rising desires of a young heart but obstacles to the teaching of reason! I see in them the right means to make him obedient to that very teaching. One can gain a hold on the passions only through passion. It is by taking them over that one can combat their tyranny, and it is always from nature itself that one can draw the right instruments for regulating nature.
[1146:] Emile is not made to remain always solitary. As a member of society he must fulfil his duties as such. Made to live with men he must get to know them. He knows mankind in general; it remains for him to know individuals. He knows what goes on in the world; he has now to learn how men live in the world. It is time to show him the front of that vast stage of which he already knows the hidden workings. He will not bring to it the foolish admiration of a thoughtless youth but the discernment of an upright and exact mind. His passions could mislead him no doubt; when do they not mislead those who give into them? But at least he will not be deceived by the passions of others. If he sees them, he will regard them with the eye of a wise man without being led away by their example nor seduced by their prejudices.
[1147:] As there is a fitting age for the study of the sciences, so there is a fitting age for the study of social skills. Whoever learns these too soon follows them throughout life, without choice, without reflection, and although they follow them competently, they never really know what they are about. But he who studies them and sees the reason for them, follows them with more insight and therefore more exactly and gracefully. Give me a child of twelve who knows nothing at all; at fifteen I will give him back to you as knowledgeable as those whom you have instructed from infancy -- with the difference that your student's knowledge will only be in his memory while mine will be in his judgment. In the same way introduce a young man of twenty into society; under good guidance in a year's time he will be more likeable and more judiciously polished than one brought up in society from childhood. For the former is able to perceive the reasons for all the proceedings relating to age, position, and sex, on which social skills depend and can reduce them to general principles and apply them to unforeseen circumstances; while the latter, who has only habit to guide him, is embarrassed as soon as he departs from it..
[1148:] Young French ladies are all brought up in convents till they are married. Do they seem to find any difficulty in acquiring the manners which are so new to them, and is it possible to accuse the ladies of Paris of awkward and embarrassed manners or of ignorance of the ways of society, because they have not acquired them in infancy? This prejudice comes from the men of the world, who know nothing of more importance than this petty science, and wrongly imagine that you cannot begin to acquire it too soon.
[1149:] It is quite true, however, that we must not wait too long. Any one who has spent the whole of his youth far from high society is all his life long awkward, constrained, out of place; his manners will be heavy and clumsy, no amount of practice will get rid of this, and he will only make himself more ridiculous by trying to do so. There is a time for every kind of teaching and we ought to recognize it, and each has its own dangers to be avoided. At this age there are more dangers than at any other; but neither do I expose my pupil to them without safeguards.
[1150:] When my method succeeds completely in attaining one object, and when in avoiding one difficulty it also provides against another, I then consider that it is a good method and that I am on the true path. This seems to be the case with regard to the expedient suggested by me in the present case. If I wish to be austere and dry with my pupil, I will lose his confidence, and he will soon conceal himself from me. If I wish to be easy and complaisant, to shut my eyes, what good does it do him to be under my care? I would only authorise his disorderly life and relieve his conscience at the expense of my own. If I introduce him into society with no object but to teach him, he will learn more than I want. If I keep him apart from society, what will he have learnt from me? Everything perhaps, except the one art absolutely necessary to man and to citizen, which is to know how to live with one's fellow human beings. If these efforts are seen to have only a distant utility, they will be like nothing for him. He is only concerned with the present. If I am content to provide him with entertainment, what good will that do? He will get soft and will learn nothing.
[1151:] We will have none of this. My plan provides for everything. Your heart, I say to the young man, needs a companion. Let us go in search of one who suits you. We will not find her easily perhaps; true merit is always rare. But we will be in no hurry, nor will we be easily discouraged. No doubt there is such a one, and we will in the end find her, or at least one who ressembles her the most. With a project so flattering to himself I introduce him into society. What more need I say? Do not you see that I have done everything?
[1152:] By describing to him the mistress who is destined for him, you may imagine whether I will make myself heard, whether I will succeed in making the qualities he ought to love pleasing and dear to him, whether I will sway his feelings to seek or shun what is good or bad for him. I would be the stupidest of men if I fail to make him in love before knowing whom he is in love with. It does not matter that the person I describe is imaginary; it is enough to disgust him with those who could tempt him. It is enough if he is continually finding comparisons that make him prefer his fantasy to the real objects he sees; and is not true love itself a fantasy, a falsehood, an illusion? We are far more in love with the image that we make than with the object it is applied to. If we saw what one loves exactly as it is, there would be no such thing as love on earth. When we cease to love, the person we used to love remains the same as before, but we no longer see with the same eyes. The magic veil falls and love disappears. But when I supply the imaginary object I have control over comparisons, and I can easily to prevent illusion with regard to realities.
[1153:] For all that, I would not want to mislead a young man by describing a model of perfection that could never exist. But I would so choose the faults of his mistress that they will suit him, that he will be pleased by them, and they may serve to correct his own. Neither would I lie to him and affirm that there really is such a person. But if he is pleased with the image, he will soon desire to find the original. From wish to supposition the trajectory is easy; it is a matter of a few skilful descriptions, which under more perceptible features will give to this imaginary object an air of greater verity. I would go so far as to give her a name. I would say, laughing, Let us call your future mistress Sophy. Sophy is a name of good omen. If she whom you choose does not have that name, at least she will be worthy of it; we may honor her with it meanwhile. If after all these details, without affirming or denying, we excuse ourselves from more evasions, his suspicions will become certainty. He will think that his destined spouse is purposely concealed from him, and that he will see her when it is the right time. If once he has arrived at this conclusion and if the characteristics to be shown to him have been well chosen, the rest is easy; there will be little risk in exposing him to the world. Protect him from his senses, and his heart is safe.
[1154:] But whether or not he personifies the model I have contrived to make so likeable to him, this model, if well done, will attach him none the less to everything that resembles it and will distance him from all that is unlike it as much as if it had a real object. What a means to preserve his heart from the dangers to which his appearance would expose him, to repress his senses by means of his imagination, to rescue him from the hands of those women who profess to educate young men, and make them pay so high a price for their teaching, and only teach a young man manners by making him utterly shameless. Sophy is so modest! With what eyes will he see their advances? Sophy is so simple! How will he like their affectations? They are too far from his thoughts and his observations to be dangerous.
[1155:] All those who speak of the governance of children follow the name prejudices and the same maxims, for their observation is at fault, and their reflection still more so. A young man is led astray in the first place neither by temperament nor by the senses but by popular opinion. If we were dealing with boys brought up in boarding schools or girls in convents, I would show that this is true even to them. For the first lessons they learn from each other, the only lessons that bear fruit, are those of vice; and it is not nature that corrupts them but example. But let us leave the boarders in schools and convents to their bad morals; they will always be without cure. I am speaking only of domestic education. Take a young man raised wisely in his father's country house, and examine him when he reaches Paris or makes his entrance into society. You will find him thinking clearly about honest matters and possessing a will as wholesome as his reason. You will find scorn for vice and horror for debauchery; at the very mention of a prostitute you will see in his eyes his innocence being scandalized. I maintain that there isn't one of them could make up his mind to enter the depressing houses of these unfortunates by himself, even if he were aware of their purpose and felt their necessity.
[1156:] Six months later consider this same young man once again. You will not recognize him. From his free-wheeling conversation, his haughty assertions, his superior airs, you would take him for another man, if his jokes about his former simplicity and his shame when any one recalls it did not show that it is he indeed and that he is ashamed of himself. How transformed he is in so short a time! What has brought about so sudden and complete a change? A change in his constitution? Would not that have taken place in his father's house? And certainly he would not have acquired these maxims and this tone at home. The first pleasures of the sense? On the contrary; those who are beginning to abandon themselves to these pleasures are timid and anxious, they shun the light and noise. The first pleasures are always mysterious; modesty gives them their savor and hides them; the first mistress does not make a man bold but timid. Wholly absorbed in a situation so novel to him, the young man retires into himself to enjoy it, and trembles for fear it should escape him. If he is noisy he is neither voluptuous nor tender; however he may boast, he has not enjoyed.
[1157:] Other ways of thinking alone have produced these differences. His heart is the same, but his opinions have changed. His feelings, which change more slowly, will finally be changed by his opinions, and it is then that he will be indeed corrupted. He has scarcely made his entrance into society before he receives a second education completely opposed the first, which teaches him to despise what he esteemed and esteem what he despised. He learns to consider the teaching of his parents and masters as the jargon of pedants, and the duties they have instilled into him as a childish morality, to be scorned now that he is grown up. He thinks he is bound in honor to change his conduct; he becomes forward without desire, and he talks foolishly from false shame. He rails against morality before he has any taste for vice, and prides himself on debauchery without knowing how to set about it. I shall never forget the confession of a young officer in the Swiss Guards, who was utterly sick of the noisy pleasures of his comrades but dared not refuse to take part in them lest he should be laughed at. "I am getting used to it," he said, "as I am getting used to tobacco. The taste will come with practice; it will not do to be a child for ever."
[1158:] Thus it is far less from sensuality than from vanity that one must preserve a young man as he enters society. He succumbs more to the tastes of others than to his own, and amour-propre is responsible for more libertines than love is.
[1159:] This being granted, I ask you, is there any one on earth better armed than my pupil against all that may attack his morals, his sentiments, his principles? Is there any one more able to resist the flood? What seduction is there against which he is not forearmed? If his desires attract him towards women, he fails to find what he seeks, and his heart, already occupied, holds him back. If he is disturbed and urged onward by his senses, where will he find satisfaction? His horror of adultery and debauchery keeps him at a distance from prostitutes and married women, and the disorders of youth may always be traced to one or other of these. A young woman of marriagable age may be a coquette, but she will not be shameless, she will not fling herself at the head of a young man who would marry her if he found her wise; besides she is always under supervision. Emile, too, will not be left entirely to himself; both of them will be under the guardianship of fear and shame, the constant companions of a first passion. They will not proceed at once to ultimate intimacies, and they will not have time to come to them gradually without hindrance. If he behaves otherwise, he must have taken lessons from his friends; he must have learned from them to despise his self-control and to imitate their boldness. But there is no one in the whole world so little given to imitation as Emile. What man is there who is so little influenced by mockery as one who has no prejudices himself and yields nothing to the prejudices of others? I have worked twenty years to arm him against mockery; they will not make him their dupe in a day. For in his eyes ridicule is the argument of fools, and nothing makes one less susceptible to raillery than to be beyond the influence of prejudice. Instead of jests he must have arguments, and while he is in this frame of mind, I am not afraid that he will be carried away by young fools. Conscience and truth are on my side. If prejudice is to enter into the matter at all, an affection of twenty years' standing counts for something. No one will ever convince him that I have wearied him with vain lessons; and in a heart so upright and so sensitive the voice of a tried and trusted friend will soon erase the shouts of twenty libertines. As it is therefore merely a question of showing him that he is deceived, that while they pretend to treat him as a man they are really treating him as a child, I shall choose to be always simple but serious and plain in my arguments, so that he may feel that I do indeed treat him as a man. I will say to him, "You will see that your welfare, in which my own is bound up, compels me to speak; I can do nothing else. But why do these young men want to persuade you? Because they desire to seduce you; they do not care for you, they take no real interest in you; their only motive is a secret spite because they see you are better than they; they want to drag you down to their own level, and they only reproach you with submitting to control that they may themselves control you. Do you think you have anything to gain by this? Are they so much wiser than I, is the affection of a day stronger than mine? To give any weight to their jests they must give weight to their authority; and by what experience do they support their maxims above ours? They have only followed the example of other silly young men, as they would have you follow theirs. To escape from the so-called prejudices of their fathers, they yield to those of their comrades. I cannot see that they are any the better off; but I see that they lose two things of value -- the affection of their parents, whose advice is that of tenderness and truth, and the wisdom of experience which teaches us to judge by what we know. For their fathers have once been young, but the young men have never been fathers.
[1160:] "But you think they are at least sincere in their foolish precepts? Not even that, dear Emile. They deceive themselves in order to deceive you. They are not in agreement with themselves; their heart continually revolts, and their very words often contradict themselves. This man who mocks at everything good would be in despair if his wife held the same views. Another extends his indifference to good morals even to his future wife, or he sinks to such depths of infamy as to be indifferent to his wife's conduct; but go a step further; speak to him of his mother. Is he willing to be treated as the child of an adulteress and the son of a woman of bad character, is he ready to assume the name of a family, to steal the patrimony of the true heir, in a word will he bear being treated as a bastard? Which of them will permit his daughter to be dishonored as he dishonors the daughter of another? There is not one of them who would not kill you if you adopted in your conduct towards him all the principles he tries to teach you. Thus they prove their inconsistency, and we know they do not believe what they say. Here are reasons, dear Emile; weigh their arguments if they have any, and compare them with mine. If I wished to have recourse like them to scorn and mockery, you would see that they lend themselves to ridicule as much or more than myself. But I am not afraid of serious inquiry. The triumph of mockers is soon over; truth endures, and their foolish laughter dies away."
[1161:] You do not think that Emile, at twenty, can possibly be docile? How differently we think! I cannot understand how he could be docile at ten, for what hold have I on him at that age? It took me fifteen years of careful preparation to secure that hold. I was not educating him, but preparing him for education. He is now sufficiently educated to be docile; he recognizes the voice of friendship and he knows how to obey reason. I let him have, it is true, the appearance of independence, but never was he more subjected to me, for he is because he wants to be. So long as I could not get the mastery over his will, I had it through his person; l never left him for a moment. Now I sometimes leave him to himself because I govern him always. When I leave him I embrace him and I say with confidence: Emile, I trust you to my friend, I leave you to his honest heart; it is hewho will take my place for you.
[1162:] To corrupt healthy affections which have not been previously depraved, to efface principles which are directly derived from our own reasoning, is not the work of a moment. If any change takes place during my absence, that absence will not be long, he will never be able to conceal himself from me, so that I shall perceive the danger before any harm comes of it, and I shall be in time to provide a remedy. Since we do not become depraved all at once, neither do we learn to deceive all at once; and if ever there was a man unskilled in the art of deception it is Emile, who has never had any occasion for deceit.
[1163:] By means of these precautions and others like them, I expect to guard him so completely against strange sights and vulgar precepts that I would rather see him in the worst company in Paris than alone in his room or in a park left to all the restlessness of his age. Whatever we may do, a young man's worst enemy is himself, and this is an enemy we cannot avoid. Yet this is an enemy of our own making, for, as I have said again and again, it is the imagination which stirs the senses. Their needs are not actually physical needs; it is not true that it is a true need at all. If no lascivious object had met our eye, if no unclean thought had entered our mind, this so-called need might never have made itself felt in us, and we should have remained chaste, without temptation, effort, or merit. We do not know how the blood of youth is stirred by certain situations and certain sights, while the youth himself does not understand the cause of his uneasiness -- an uneasiness difficult to subdue and certain to recur. For my own part, the more I consider this serious crisis and its causes, immediate and remote, the more convinced I am that a solitary being brought up in some desert, apart from books, teaching, and women, would die a virgin, however long he lived.
[1164:] But we are not concerned with a savage of this sort. When we educate a man among his fellow men and for social life, we cannot, and indeed we ought not to, bring him up in this wholesome ignorance, and half knowledge is worse than none. The memory of things we have observed, the ideas we have acquired, follow us into retirement and people it, against our will, with images more seductive than the things themselves, and these make solitude as fatal to those who bring such ideas with them as it is wholesome for those who have never left it.
[1165:] Therefore, watch carefully over the young man; he can protect himself from all other foes, but it is for you to protect him against himself. Never leave him night or day, or at least share his room; never let him go to bed till he is sleepy, and let him rise as soon as he wakes. Distrust instinct as soon as you cease to rely altogether upon it. Instinct was good while he acted under its guidance only; now that he is in the midst of human institutions, instinct is not to be trusted. It must not be destroyed, it must be controlled, which is perhaps a more difficult matter. It would be very dangerous if instinct taught your pupil to divert these senses and to supplement the occasions for satisfying them. If once he acquires this dangerous supplement he is lost. From then on, body and soul will be enervated; he will carry to the grave the sad effects of this habit, the most fatal habit which a young man can be subjected to. Without doubt it would be better still . . . If the furors of an ardent temperament become invinciple, my dear Emile, I pity you; but I shall not hesitate for a moment. I will not permit the purposes of nature to be evaded. If a tyrant must subjugate you, I prefer to surrender you to a tyrant from whom I may deliver you. Whatever happens, I can free you more easily from the slavery of women than from yourself.
[1166:] Up to the age of twenty, the body is still growing and requires all its strength. Until that age continence is the law of nature, and this law is rarely violated without injury to the constitution. After twenty, continence is a moral duty; it is an important duty, for it teaches us to control ourselves, to be masters of our own appetites. But moral duties have their modifications, their exceptions, their rules. When human weakness makes an alternative inevitable, of two evils choose the least; in any case it is better to commit a misdeed than to contract a vicious habit.
[1167:] Remember, I am not talking of my pupil now, but of yours. His passions, to which you have given way, are your master; yield to them openly and without concealing his victory. If you are able to show him it in its true light, he will be ashamed rather than proud of it, and you will secure the right to guide him in his wanderings, at least so as to avoid precipices. The disciple must do nothing, not even evil, without the knowledge and consent of his master. It is a hundredfold better that the tutor should approve of a misdeed than that he should deceive himself or be deceived by his pupil, and the wrong should be done without his knowledge. He who thinks he must shut his eyes to one thing, must soon shut them altogether. The first abuse which is permitted leads to others, and this chain of consequences only ends in the complete overthrow of all order and contempt for every law.
[1168:] There is another mistake which I have already dealt with, a mistake continually made by narrow-minded persons; they constantly affect the dignity of a master,and wish to be regarded by their disciples as perfect. This method is just the contrary of what should be done. How is it that they fail to perceive that when they try to strengthen their authority they are really destroying it; that to gain a hearing one must put oneself in the place of our hearers, and that to speak to the human heart, one must be a man. All these perfect people neither touch nor persuade. People always say, "It is easy for them to fight against passions they do not feel." Show your pupil your own weaknesses if you want to cure his; let him see in you struggles like his own; let him learn by your example to master himself and let him not say like other young men, "These old people, who are vexed because they are no longer young, want to treat all young people as if they were old; and they make a crime of our passions because their own passions are dead."
[1169:] Montaigne tells us that he once asked Seigneur de Langey how often, in his negotiations with Germany, he had got drunk in his king's service. I would willingly ask the tutor of a certain young man how often he has entered a house of ill-fame for his pupil's sake. How often? I am wrong. If the first time has not cured the young libertine of all desire to go there again, if he does not return penitent and ashamed, if he does not shed torrents of tears upon your bosom, leave him on the spot; either he is a monster or you are a fool; you will never do him any good. But let us have done with these last expedients, which are as distressing as they are dangerous. Our kind of education has no need of them.
[1170:] What precautions we must take with a well-born young man before exposing him to the scandalous manners of our age! These precautions are painful but necessary; negligence in this matter is the ruin of all our young men; degeneracy is the result of youthful excesses, and it is these excesses which make men what they are. Old and base in their vices, their hearts are shriveled because their worn-out bodies were corrupted at an early age. They have scarcely strength to stir. The subtlety of their thoughts betrays a mind lacking in substance; they are incapable of any great or noble feeling, they have neither simplicity nor vigor; altogether abject and meanly wicked, they are merely frivolous, deceitful, and false; they have not even courage enough to be distinguished criminals. Such are the despicable men produced by early debauchery. If there were but one among them who knew how to be sober and temperate, to guard his heart, his body, his morals from the contagion of bad example, at the age of thirty he would crush all these insects, and would become their master with far less trouble than it cost him to become master of himself.
[1171:] However little Emile owes to birth and fortune, he might be this man if he chose; but he despises such people too much to condescend to make them his slaves. Let us now watch him in their midst as he enters into society, not to claim the first place, but to acquaint himself with it and to seek a companion worthy of himself.
[1172:] Whatever his rank or birth, whatever the society into which he is introduced, <>his entrance into that society will be simple and unaffected. God forbit that he be unlucky enough to shine in society. The qualities which make a good impression at the first glance are not his; he neither possesses them, nor desires to possess them. He cares too little for the opinions of other people to value their prejudices, and he is indifferent whether people esteem him or not until they know him. His manner of presenting himself is neither shy nor conceited but natural and sincere. He knows nothing of constraint or concealment. and he is just the same among a group of people as he is when he is alone. Will this make him rude, scornful, and careless of others? On the contrary; if he were not heedless of others when he lived alone, why should he be heedless of them now that he is living among them? He does not prefer them to himself in his manners, because he does not prefer them to himself in his heart; but neither does he show them an indifference which he is far from feeling. If he is unacquainted with the forms of politeness, he is not unacquainted with the attentions dictated by humanity. He cannot bear to see any one suffer; he will not give up his place to another from mere external politeness, but he will willingly yield it to him out of kindness if he sees that he is being neglected and that this neglect hurts him. For it will be less disagreeable to Emile to remain standing of his own accord than to see another compelled to stand.
[1173:] Although Emile has no very high opinion of people in general, he does not show any scorn of them because he pities them and is sorry for them. Since he cannot give them a taste for what is truly good, he leaves them the imaginary good with which they are satisfied, lest by robbing them of this he should leave them worse off than before. So he neither argues nor contradicts; neither does he flatter nor agree. He states his opinion without arguing with others because he loves liberty above all things, and freedom is one of the fairest gifts of liberty.
[1174:] He says little, for he is not anxious to attract attention. For the same reason he only says what is to the point; who could induce him to speak otherwise? Emile is too well informed to be a chatter-box. A great flow of words comes either from a pretentious spirit, of which I shall speak presently, or from the value laid upon trivial things that we foolishly think to be as important in the eyes of others as in our own. He who knows enough of things to value them at their true worth never says too much; for he can also judge of the attention paid to him and the interest aroused by what he says. People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little. It is plain that an ignorant person thinks everything he does know important, and he tells it to everybody. But a well educated man is not so ready to display his learning. He would have too much to say, and he sees that there is much more to be said, so he holds his peace.
[1175:] Far from confronting the manners of others, Emile conforms to them fairly willingly; not that he may appear to know all about them, nor yet to affect the airs of a man of fashion, but on the contrary for fear that he might attract attention, and in order to pass unnoticed. He is most at his ease when no one pays any attention to him.
[1176:] Although when he makes his entrance into society he knows nothing of its customs, this does not make him shy or timid. If he keeps in the background, it is not because he is embarrassed but because if you want to see, you must not be seen. For he scarcely troubles himself at all about what people think of him, and he is not the least afraid of ridicule. Hence he is always quiet and self-possessed and is not troubled with shyness. All he has to do is done as well as he knows how to do it, whether people are looking at him or not. And as he is always on the alert to observe other people, he acquires their ways with an ease impossible to the slaves of other people's opinions. We might say that he acquires the ways of society precisely because he cares so little about them.
[1177:] But do not make any mistake as to his bearing; it is not to be compared with that of your agreeable young men. He is firm and self-sufficient; his manners are free and not arrogant. An insolent look is the mark of a slave; there is nothing affected about independence. I never saw a man who had pride in his soul show it in his bearing. This affectation is more suited to vile and vain souls who have no other means of asserting themselves. I read somewhere that a foreigner appeared one day in the presence of the famous Marcel, who asked him what country he came from. "I am an Englishman," replied the, stranger. "You are an Englishman?" replied the dancer, "You come from that island where the citizens have a share in the government, and form part of the sovereign power?
[Note 35] No, sir, your lowered brow, your timid glance, your hesitating manner, announce only a slave who has the title of an elector."
[1178:] I cannot say whether this saying shows much knowledge of the true relation between a man's character and his appearance. I have not the honor of being a dancing master, and I should have thought just the opposite. I should have said, "This Englishman is no courtier; I never heard that courtiers have a timid bearing and a hesitating manner. A man whose appearance is timid in the presence of a dancer might not be timid in the House of Commons." Surely this M. Marcel must take his fellow-countrymen for so many Romans.
[1179:] When one loves one wants to be loved. Emile loves men; he wants therefore to please them. Even more does he wish to please the women. His age, his character, the object he has in view, all increase this desire. I say his character, for this has a great effect. Men of good character are those who really adore women. They do not have the mocking jargon of gallantry like the rest, but their eagerness is more genuinely tender because it comes from the heart. In the presence of a young woman, I could pick out a young man of character and self-control from among a hundred thousand libertines. Consider what Emile must be, with all the eagerness of early youth and so many reasons for resistance! For in the presence of women I think he will sometimes be shy and timid; but this shyness will certainly not be displeasing, and the least foolish of them will only too often find a way to enjoy it and augment it. Moreover, his eagerness will take a different shape according to those he has to do with. He will be more modest and respectful to married women, more eager and tender towards young girls. He never loses sight of his purpose, and it is always those who most recall it to him who receive the greater share of his attentions.
[1180:] No one could be more attentive to every consideration based upon the laws of nature, and even on the laws of good society. But the former are always preferred before the latter, and Emile will show more respect to an elderly person in private life than to a young magistrate of his own age. As he is generally one of the youngest in the company, he will always be one of the most modest, not from the vanity which apes humility, but from a natural feeling founded upon reason. He will not have the effrontery of the young snob who speaks louder than the wise and interrupts the old in order to amuse the company. He will never give any cause for the reply given to Louis XV by an old gentleman who was asked whether he preferred this century or the last: "Sire, I spent my youth in reverence towards the old; I find myself compelled to spend my old age in reverence towards the young."
[1181:] Having a heart that is tender and sensitive but caring nothing for the weight of popular opinion, although he loves to give pleasure to others he will care little about being considered a person of importance. Hence he will be affectionate rather than polite, he will never be pompous or affected,. and he will be always more touched by a caress than by much praise. For the same reasons he will never be careless of his manners or his clothes; perhaps he will be rather particular about his dress, not that he may show himself a man of taste, but to make his appearance more pleasing. He will never require a gilt frame, and he will never spoil his style by a display of wealth.
[1182:] It is clear that all this does not require extensive precepts from me; it is all the result of his early education. People make a great mystery of the ways of society, as if, at the age when these ways are acquired, we did not take to them quite naturally, and as if the first laws of politeness were not to be found in a kindly heart. True politeness consists in showing our goodwill towards men; when one has it it reveals itself without any difficulty. Only those who lack this goodwill are compelled to reduce the outward signs of it to an art.
[1183:] "The worst effect of artificial politeness is that it teaches us how to dispense with the virtues it imitates. If our education were to teach us kindness and humanity, we would be polite, or we would have no need of politeness.
[1184:] "If we do not have those qualities that manifest themselves through the social graces, we will have those that proclaim the honest man and the citizen; we will have no need for falsehood.
[1185:] "Instead of seeking to please by artificiality, it will suffice that we are good; instead of flattering the weaknesses of others by falsehood, it will suffice to tolerate them.
[1186:] "Those whom we relate to will neither be puffed up nor corrupted by such intercourse; they will only be grateful and will be informed by it."
[Note 36]
[1187:] It seems to me that if any education is calculated to produce the sort of politeness required by M. Duclos in this passage, it is the education I have already described.
[1188:] Yet I admit that with such different teaching Emile will not be just like everybody else, and God preserve him from ever being so. But where he is unlike other people, he will be neither irritating nor absurd; the difference will be perceptible but not unpleasant. Emile will be, if you like, an agreeable foreigner. At first his peculiarities will be excused with the phrase, "He will learn." After a time people will get used to his ways, and seeing that he does not change they will still make excuses for him and say, "He is made that way."
[1189:] He will not be fêted as a charming man, but every one will like him without knowing why. No one will praise his intellect, but every one will be ready to make him the judge between men of intellect. His own intelligence will be clear and limited, his mind will be accurate, and his judgment sane. Since he never runs after new ideas, he cannot pride himself on his wit. I have convinced him that all wholesome ideas, ideas which are really useful to mankind, were among the earliest known, that in all times they have formed the true bonds of society, and that there is nothing left for ambitious minds but to seek distinction for themselves by means of ideas which are injurious and fatal to mankind. This way of winning admiration scarcely appeals to him; he knows how he ought to seek his own happiness in life, and how he can contribute to the happiness of others. The sphere of his knowledge is restricted to what is profitable. His path is narrow and clearly defined; as he has no temptation to leave it, he is lost in the crowd; he will neither distinguish himself nor will he lose his way. Emile is a man of common sense and he has no desire to be anything more. You may try in vain to insult him by applying this phrase to him; he will always consider it a title of honor.
[1190:] Although from his wish to please he is no longer wholly indifferent to the opinion of others, he only considers that opinion so far as he himself is directly concerned, without troubling himself about arbitrary values, which are subject to no law but that of fashion or conventionality He will have pride enough to wish to do well in everything that he undertakes, and even to wish to do it better than others; he will want to be the swiftest runner, the strongest wrestler, the cleverest workman, the readiest in games of skill. But he will not seek advantages which are not in themselves clear gain, that need to be supported by the opinion of others, such as to be thought wittier than another, a better speaker, more learned, etc.. Still less will he trouble himself with those which have nothing to do with the man himself, such as higher birth, a greater reputation for wealth, credit, or public estimation, or the impression created by a showy exterior.
[1191:] Since he loves men because they are like himself, he will prefer those who are the most like himself, because he will feel himself good. And judging this resemblance by similarity of taste in morals, by all that belongs to a good character, he will be delighted to win approval. He will not say to himself in so many words, "I am delighted to gain approval," but "I am delighted because they say I have done right; I am delighted because the men who honor me are worthy of honor. While they judge so wisely, it is a fine thing to win their respect."
[1192:] As he studies men in their conduct in society, just as he formerly studied them through their passions in history, he will often have occasion to consider what it is that pleases or offends the human heart. He is now busy with the philosophy of the principles of taste, and this is the most suitable subject for his present study.
[1193:] The further we seek our definitions of taste, the further we go astray. Taste is merely the power of judging what is pleasing or displeasing to most people. Go beyond this, and you cannot say what taste is. It does not follow that the men of taste are in the majority; for though the majority judges wisely with regard to each individual thing, there are few men who follow the judgment of the majority in everything; and though the most general agreement in taste constitutes good taste, there are few men of good taste just as there are few beautiful people, although beauty consists in the sum of the most usual features.
[1194:] It must be observed that we are not here concerned with what we like because it is serviceable, or hate because it is harmful to us. Taste deals only with things that are indifferent to us, or that affect at most our amusements, not those which relate to our needs. Taste is not required to judge of these; appetite alone is sufficient. It is this which makes mere decisions of taste so difficult and as it seems so arbitrary. For beyond the instinct they follow there appears to be no reason whatever for them. We must also make a distinction between the laws of good taste in morals and its laws in physical matters. In the latter the laws of taste appear to be absolutely inexplicable. But it must be observed that there is a moral element in everything which involves imitation.
[Note 37] This is the explanation of forms of beauty that seem to be physical, but are not so in reality. I may add that taste has local rules which make it dependent in many respects on the country we are in, its manners, government, institutions; it has other rules which depend upon age, sex, and character, and it is in this sense that we must not dispute over matters of taste.
[1195:] Taste is natural to men; but all do not possess it in the same degree. It is not developed to the same extent in every one; and in every one it is liable to be modified by a variety of causes. Such taste as we may possess depends on our native sensibility; its cultivation and its form depend upon the society in which we have lived. In the first place we must live in societies of many different kinds so as to compare much. In the next place, there must be societies for amusement and idleness, for in business relations, interest, not pleasure, is our rule. Lastly, there must be societies in which people are fairly equal, where the tyranny of public opinion may be moderate, where pleasure rather than vanity is queen. Where this is not so, fashion stifles taste, and we seek what gives distinction rather than delight.
[1196:] In the latter case it is no longer true that good taste is the taste of the majority. Why is this? Because the purpose is different. Then the crowd has no longer any opinion of its own, it only follows the judgment of those who are supposed to know more about it. Its approval is bestowed not on what is good, but on what they have already approved. At any time let every man have his own opinion, and what is most pleasing in itself will always secure most votes.
[1197:] Every beauty that is to be found in the works of man is imitated. All the true models of taste are to be found in nature. The further we get from the master, the worse are our pictures. Then it is that we find our models in what we ourselves like, and the beauty of fancy, subject to caprice and to authority, is nothing but what is pleasing to our leaders.
[1198:] Those leaders are the artists, the wealthy, and the great, and they themselves follow the lead of self-interest or pride. Some to display their wealth, others to profit by it, they seek eagerly for new ways of spending it. This is how luxury acquires its power and makes us love what is rare and costly; this so-called beauty consists, not in following nature, but in disobeying her. Hence luxury and bad taste are inseparable. Wherever taste is lavish, it is bad.
[1199:] Taste, good or bad, takes its shape especially in the intercourse between the two sexes. The cultivation of taste is a necessary consequence of this form of society. But when enjoyment is easily obtained, and the desire to please becomes lukewarm, taste must degenerate; and this is, in my opinion, one of the best reasons why good taste implies good morals.
[1200:] Consult the women's opinions in bodily matters, in all that concerns the senses. Consult the men in matters of morality and all that concerns the understanding. When women are what they ought to be, they will limit themselves to things within their competence and will always judge well. But since they have set themselves up as arbiters of literature, since they have begun to criticize books and to put their forces into making them, they are no longer good judges of anything. Authors who take the advice of lady scholars will always be ill advised; suitors who consult them about their clothes will always be absurdly dressed. I will soon have an opportunity of speaking of the real talents of the female sex, the way to cultivate these talents, and the matters in regard to which their decisions should receive attention.
[1201:] These are the elementary considerations which I shall lay down as principles when I discuss with Emile this matter which is by no means indifferent to him in his present inquiries. And to whom should it be a matter of indifference? To know what people may find pleasant or unpleasant is not only necessary to any one who requires their help, it is still more necessary to any one who would help them. You must please them if you would do them service; and the art of writing is no idle pursuit if it is used to make men hear the truth.
[1202:] If in order to cultivate my pupil's taste I were compelled to choose between a country where this form of culture has not yet arisen and those in which it has already degenerated, I would progress backwards. I would begin his survey with the latter and end with the former. My reason for this choice is that taste becomes corrupted through excessive delicacy, which makes it sensitive to things which most men do not perceive. This delicacy leads to a spirit of discussion, for the more subtle is our discrimination of things the more things there are for us. This subtlety increases the delicacy and decreases the uniformity of our touch. So there are as many tastes as there are people. In disputes as to our preferences, philosophy and knowledge are enlarged, and thus we learn to think. It is only men accustomed to plenty of society who are capable of very delicate observations, for these observations do not occur to us till the last, and people who are unused to all sorts of society exhaust their attention in the consideration of the more conspicuous features . There is perhaps no civilized place upon earth where the common taste is so bad as in Paris. Yet it is in this capital that good taste is cultivated, and it seems that few books make any impression in Europe whose authors have not studied in Paris. Those who think it is enough to read our books are mistaken; there is more to be learnt from the conversation of authors than from their books; and it is not from the authors that we learn most It is the spirit of social life which develops a thinking mind and carries the eye as far as it can reach. If you have a spark of genius, go and spend a year in Paris. You will soon be all that you are capable of becoming, or you will never be good for anything at all.
[1203:] One may learn to think in places where bad taste rules supreme. But we must not think like those whose taste is bad, and it is very difficult to avoid this if we spend much time among them. We must use their efforts to perfect the machinery of judgment, but we must be careful not to make the same use of it. I will take care not to polish Emile's judgment so far as to transform it, and when he has acquired discernment enough to feel and compare the varied tastes of men, I will lead him to fix his own taste upon simpler matters.
[1204:] I will go still further in order to keep his taste pure and wholesome. In the tumult of dissipation I shall find opportunities for useful conversation with him. And while these conversations are always about things in which he takes a delight, I will take care to make them as amusing as they are instructive. Now is the time to read pleasant books; now is the time to teach him to analyze speech and to appreciate all the beauties of eloquence and diction. It is a small matter to learn languages; they are less useful than people think, but the study of languages leads us on to that of grammar in general. We must learn Latin if we would have a thorough knowledge of French. These two languages must be studied and compared if we would understand the rules of the art of speaking.
[1205:] There is, moreover. a certain simplicity of taste which goes straight to the heart; and this is only to be found in the classics. In oratory, poetry, and every kind of literature, Emile will find the classical authors as he found them in history, full of matter and sober in their judgment. The authors of our own time, on the contrary, say little and talk much. To take their judgment as our constant law is not the way to form our own judgment. These differences of taste make themselves felt in all that is left of classical times and even on their tombs. Our monuments are covered with praises, theirs recorded facts."Sta, viator; heroem calcas."
[1206:] If I had found this epitaph on an ancient monument, I should at once have guessed it was modern. For there is nothing so common among us as heroes, but among the ancients they were rare. Instead of saying a man was a hero, they would have said what he had done to gain that name. With the epitaph of this hero compare that of the effeminate Sardanapalus: "Tarsus and Anchiales I built in a day, and now I am dead."
[1207:] Which do you think says most? Our inflated monumental style is only fit to trumpet forth the praises of pygmies. The ancients showed men as they were, and it was plain that they were men indeed. Xenophon did honor to the memory of some warriors who were slain by treason during the retreat of the Ten Thousand. "They died," said he, "without stain in war and in love." That is all, but think how full was the heart of the author of this short and simple elegy. Woe to him who fails to perceive its charm.
[1208:] The following words were engraved on a tomb at Thermopylæ"Go, Traveler, tell Sparta that here we fell in obedience to her laws"
[1209:] It is pretty clear that this was not the work of the Academy of Inscriptions.
[1210:] If I am not mistaken, the attention of my pupil, who sets so small a value upon words, will be directed in the first place to these differences, and they will affect his choice in his reading. He will be carried away by the manly eloquence of Demosthenes, and will say, "This is an orator;" but when he reads Cicero, he will say, "This is a lawyer."
[1211:] In general Emile will have more taste for the books of the ancients than for our own, just because they were the first, and therefore the ancients are nearer to nature and their genius is more distinct. Whatever La Motte and the Abbé Terrasson may say, there is no real advance in human reason, for what we gain in one direction we lose in another. For all minds start from the same point, and as the time spent in learning what others have thought is so much time lost in learning to think for ourselves, we have more acquired knowledge and less vigor of mind. Our minds like our arms are accustomed to use tools for everything and to do nothing for themselves. Fontenelle used to say that all these disputes as to the ancients and the moderns could be reduced to whether the trees in former times were taller than they are now. If agriculture had changed, it would be worth our while to ask this question.
[1212:] After I have led Emile to the sources of pure literature, I will also show him the channels into the reservoirs of modern compilers -- journals, translations, dictionaries. He will cast a glance at them all, and then leave them for ever. To amuse him he will hear the chatter of the academies. I will draw his attention to the fact that every member of them is worth more by himself than he is as a member of the society; he will then draw his own conclusions as to the utility of these fine institutions.
[1213:] I take him to the theatre to study taste, not morals; for in the theatre above all taste is revealed to those who can think. Lay aside precepts and morality, I should say; this is not the place to study them. The stage is not made for truth; its object is to flatter and amuse. There is no place where one can learn so completely the art of pleasing and of interesting the human heart. The study of plays leads to the study of poetry; both have the same end in view. If he has the least glimmering of taste for poetry, how eagerly will he study the languages of the poets, Greek, Latin, and Italian! These studies will afford him unlimited amusement and will be none the less valuable. They will be a delight to him at an age and in circumstances when the heart finds so great a charm in every kind of beauty which affects it. Picture to yourself on the one hand Emile, on the other some young rascal from college, reading the fourth book of the Æneid or Tibullus, or the Banquet of Plato: what a difference between them! What stirs the heart of Emile to its depths, makes not the least impression on the other! Oh, good youth, stay, make a pause in your reading, you are too deeply moved. I want you to find pleasure in the language of love, but I do not wnt you to be carried away by it. Be a wise man, but be a good man too. If you are only one of these, you are nothing. After this let him win fame or not in dead languages, in literature, in poetry, I care little. He will be none the worse if he knows nothing of them, and his education is not concerned with these mere words.
[1214:] My main object in teaching him to feel and love beauty of every kind is to fix his affections and his taste on these, to prevent the corruption of his natural appetites, in case he should have to seek some day in the midst of his wealth for the means of happiness which should be found close at hand. I have said elsewhere that taste is only the art of being a connoisseur in matters of little importance, and this is quite true. But since the charm of life depends on a tissue of these matters of little importance, such efforts are no small thing; through their means we learn how to fill our life with the good things within our reach, with as much truth as they may hold for us. I do not refer to the morally good which depends on a good disposition of the heart, but only to that which depends on the body, on real delight, apart from the prejudices of public opinion.
[1215:] The better to unfold my idea, allow me for a moment to leave Emile, whose pure and wholesome heart cannot be taken as a rule for others, and to seek in my own memory for an illustration better suited to the reader and more in accordance with his own manners.
[1216:] There are professions which seem to change a man's nature, to recast, either for better or worse, the men who adopt them. A coward becomes a brave man in the regiment of Navarre. It is not only in the army that esprit de corps is acquired, and its effects are not always for good. I have thought again and again with terror that if I had the misfortune to fill a certain post I am thinking of in a certain country, before to-morrow I should certainly be a tyrant, an extortioner, a destroyer of the people, harmful to my king, and a professed enemy of mankind, a foe to justice and every kind of virtue.
[1217:] In the same way, if I were rich, I should have done all that is required to gain riches; I should therefore be insolent and degraded, sensitive and feeling only on my own behalf, harsh and pitiless to all besides, a scornful spectator of the sufferings of the masses -- for that is what I would call the poor -- to make people forget that I was once poor myself. Lastly I would make my fortune a means to my own pleasures with which I should be wholly occupied; and so far I should be just like other people.
[1218:] But in one respect I would be very unlike them; I would be sensual and voluptuous rather than proud and vain, and I should give myself up to the luxury of comfort rather than to that of ostentation. I would even be somewhat ashamed to make too great a show of my wealth, and if I overwhelmed the envious with my pomp I would always fancy I heard him saying, "Here is a rascal who is greatly afraid that we should take him for anything but what he is."
[1219:] In the vast profusion of good things upon this earth I would seek what I like best, and what I can best appropriate to myself. To this end, the first use I should make of my wealth would be to purchase leisure and freedom, to which I would add health, if it were to be purchased; but health can only be bought by temperance, and as there is no real pleasure without health, I would be temperate from sensual motives.
[1220:] I would also keep as close as possible to nature, to gratify the senses given me by nature, being quite convinced that, the greater her share in my pleasures the more real I will find them. In the choice of models for imitation I will always choose nature as my pattern; in my appetites I will give her the preference; in my tastes she will always be consulted; in my food I will always choose what most owes its charm to her, and what has passed through the fewest possible hands on its way to table. I will be on my guard against fraudulent shams; I will go out to meet pleasure. No cook will grow rich on my gross and foolish greediness; he will not poison me with fish which cost its weight in gold, my table will not be decked with fetid splendor or putrid flesh from far-off lands. I will take any amount of trouble to gratify my sensibility, since this trouble has a pleasure of its own, a pleasure more than we expect. If I wished to taste a food from the ends of the earth, I would go, like Apicius, in search of it, rather than send for it; for the daintiest dishes always lack a charm which cannot be brought along with them, a flavor which no cook can give them-the air of the country where they are produced.
[1221:] For the same reason I would not follow the example of those who are never well off where they are, but are always contradicting the seasons and confusing countries and their seasons; those who seek winter in summer and summer in winter, and go to Italy to be cold and to the north to be warm without considering that when they think they are escaping from the severity of the seasons, they are going to meet that severity in places where people are not prepared for it. I will stay in one place, or I will adopt just the opposite course; I should like to get all possible enjoyment out of one season to discover what is peculiar to any given country. I would have a variety of pleasures, and habits quite unlike one another, but each according to nature; I would spend the summer at Naples and the winter in St. Petersburg. Sometimes I would breathe the soft zephyr lying in the cool grottoes of Tarentum, and again I would enjoy the illuminations of an ice palace, breathless and wearied with the pleasures of the dance.
[1222:] In the service of my table and the adornment of my dwelling I would imitate in the simplest ornaments the variety of the seasons and draw from each its charm without anticipating its successor. There is no taste but only difficulty to be found in thus disturbing the order of nature. To snatch from her unwilling gifts, which she yields regretfully, with her curse upon them; gifts which have neither strength nor flavor, which can neither nourish the body nor tickle the palate. Nothing is more insipid than forced fruits. A wealthy man in Paris, with all his stoves and hot-houses, only succeeds in getting all the year round poor fruit and poor vegetables for his table at a very high price. If I had cherries in frost, and golden melons in the depths of winter, what pleasure should I find in them when my palate did not need moisture or refreshment? Would the heavy chestnut be very pleasant in the heat of the dog-days; would I prefer to have it hot from the stove, rather than the gooseberry, the strawberry, the refreshing fruits which the earth takes care to provide for me? A mantelpiece covered in January with forced vegetation, with pale and scentless flowers, is not winter adorned, but spring robbed of its beauty. we deprive ourselves of the pleasure of seeking the first violet in the woods, of noting the earliest buds, and exclaiming in a rapture of delight, "Mortals, you are not forsaken, nature is living still."
[1223:] To be well served I would have few servants; this has been said before, but it is worth saying again. A tradesman gets more real service from his one man than a duke from the ten gentlemen round about him. It has often struck me when I am sitting at table with my glass beside me that I can drink whenever I please; whereas, if I were dining in state, twenty men would have to call for "Wine" before I could quench my thirst. You may be sure that whatever is done for you by other people is ill done. I would not send to the shops, I would go myself; I would go so that my servants should not make their own terms with the shopkeepers, and to get a better choice and cheaper prices; I would go for the sake of pleasant exercise and to get a glimpse of what was going on out of doors. This is amusing and sometimes instructive. Lastly I would go for the sake of the walk; there is always something in that. A sedentary life is the source of tedium; when we walk a good deal we are never dull. A porter and footmen are poor interpreters; I should never wish to have such people between the world and myself, nor would I travel with all the fuss of a coach, as if I were afraid people would speak to me. The horses of a man who uses his legs are always ready; if they are tired or ill, their owner is the first to know it; he need not be afraid of being kept at home while his coachman is on the spree; on the road he will not have to submit to all sorts of delays, nor will he be consumed with impatience, nor compelled to stay in one place a moment longer than he chooses. Lastly, since no one serves us so well as we serve ourselves, had we the power of Alexander and the wealth of Crœsus we should accept no services from others, except those we cannot perform for ourselves.
[1224:] I would not live in a palace; for even in a palace I would only occupy one room. Every room which is common property belongs to nobody, and the rooms of each of my servants would be as strange to me as my neighbor's. The Orientals, although very voluptuous, are lodged in plain and simply furnished dwellings. They consider life as a journey, and their house as an inn. This reason scarcely appeals to us rich people who propose to live for ever; but I should find another reason which would have the same effect. It would seem to me that if I settled myself in one place in the midst of such splendor, I should banish myself from every other place, and imprison myself, so to speak, in my palace. The world is a palace fair enough for any one; and is not everything at the disposal of the rich man when he seeks enjoyment? "Ubi bene, ibi patria," that is his motto; his home is anywhere where money will carry him, his country is anywhere where there is room for his strong-box, as Philip considered as his own any place where a mule laden with silver could enter.
[Note 38] Why then should we shut ourselves up within walls and gates as if we never meant to leave them? If pestilence, war, or rebellion drive me from one place, I go to another, and I find my hotel there before me. Why should I build a mansion for myself when the world is already at my disposal? Why should I be in such a hurry to live, to bring from afar delights which I can find on the spot? It is impossible to make a pleasant life for oneself when one is always at war with oneself. Thus Empodocles reproached the men of Agrigentum with heaping up pleasures as if they had but one day to live, and building as if they would live forever.
[1225:] And what use have I for so large a dwelling, as I have so few people to live in it, and still fewer goods to fill it? My furniture would be as simple as my tastes; I would have neither picture-gallery nor library, especially if I was fond of reading and knew something about pictures. I should then know that such collections are never complete, and that the lack of that which is wanting causes more annoyance than if one had nothing at all. In. this respect abundance is the cause of want, as every collector knows to his cost. If you are an expert, do not make a collection; if you know how to use your cabinets, you will not have any to show.
[1226:] Gambling is no sport for the rich, it is the resource of those who have nothing to do. I shall be so busy with my pleasures that I shall have no time to waste. I am poor and lonely and I never play, unless it is a game of chess now and then, and that is more than enough. If I were rich I would play even less,, and for very low stakes, so that I should not be disappointed myself, nor see the disappointment of others. The wealthy man has no motive for play, and the love of play will not degenerate into the passion for gambling unless the disposition is evil. The rich man is always more keenly aware of his losses than his gains, and as in games where the stakes are not high the winnings are generally exhausted in the long run, he will usually lose more than he gains, so that if we reason rightly we shall scarcely take a great fancy to games where the odds are against us. He who flatters his vanity so far as to believe that Fortune favors him can seek her favor in more exciting ways; and her favors are just as clearly shown when the stakes are low as when they are high. The taste for play, the result of greed and dullness, only lays hold of empty hearts and heads; and I think I should have enough feeling and knowledge to dispense with its help. Thinkers are seldom gamblers; gambling interrupts the habit of thought and turns it towards barren combinations; thus one good result, perhaps the only good result of the taste for science, is that it deadens to some extent this vulgar passion. People will prefer to try to discover the uses of play rather than to devote themselves to it. I should argue with the gamblers against gambling, and I should find more delight in scoffing at their losses than in winning their money.
[1227:] I should be the same in private life as in my social intercourse. I should wish my fortune to bring comfort in its train, and never to make people conscious of inequalities of wealth. Showy dress is inconvenient in many ways. To preserve as much freedom as possible among other men, I should like to be dressed in such a way that 1 should not seem out of place among all classes, and should not attract attention in any; so that without affectation or change I might mingle with the crowd at the inn or with the nobility at the Palais Royal. In this way I should be more than ever my own master, and should be free to enjoy the pleasures of all sorts and conditions of men. There are women, so they say, whose doors are closed to embroidered cuffs, women who will only receive guests who wear lace ruffles. I should spend my days elsewhere; though if these women were young and pretty I might sometimes put on lace ruffles to spend an evening or so in their company.
[1228:] Mutual affection, similarity of tastes, suitability of character -- these are the only bonds between my companions and myself. Among them I would be a man, not a person of wealth; the charm of their society should never be embittered by self-seeking. If my wealth had not robbed me of all humanity, I would scatter my benefits and my services broadcast, but I should want companions about me, not courtiers, friends, not protégés. I should wish my friends to regard me as their host, not their patron. Independence and equality would leave to my relations with my friends the sincerity of goodwill; while duty and self-seeking would have no place among us. and we should know no law but that of pleasure and friendship.
[1229:] Neither a friend nor a mistress can be bought. Women may be got for money, but that road will never lead to love. Love is not only not for sale; money strikes it dead. If a man pays, were he indeed the most lovable of men, the mere fact of payment would prevent any lasting affection. He will soon be paying for some one else, or rather some one else will get his money; and in this double connection based on self-seeking and debauchery, without love, honour, or true pleasure, the woman is grasping, faithless, and unhappy, and she is treated by the wretch to whom she gives her money as she treats the fool who gives his money to her; she has no love for either. It would be sweet to be generous towards one we love, if that did not make a bargain of love. I know only one way of gratifying this desire with the woman one loves without embittering love; it is to bestow our all upon her and to live at her expense. It remains to be seen whether there is any woman with regard to whom such conduct would not be unwise.
[1230:] He who said, "Laïs is mine, but I am not hers," was talking nonsense. Possession which is not mutual is nothing at all; at most it is the possession of the sex not of the individual. But where there is no morality in love, why make such ado about the rest? Nothing is so easy to find. A muleteer is in this respect as near to happiness as a millionaire.
[1231:] Oh, if we could thus trace out the unreasonableness of vice, how often should we find that when it has attained its object, it discovers it is not what it seemed! Why is there this cruel haste to corrupt innocence, to make a victim of a young creature whom we ought to protect, one who is dragged by this first false step into a gulf of misery from which only death can release her? Brutality, vanity, folly, error, and nothing more. This pleasure itself is unnatural; it rests on popular opinion, and popular opinion at its worst, since it depends on scorn of self. He who knows he is the basest of men fears comparison with others, and would be the first that he may be less hateful. See if those who are most greedy in pursuit of such fancied pleasures are ever attractive young men -- men worthy of pleasing, men who might have some excuse if they were hard to please. Not so; any one with good looks, merit, and feeling has little fear of his mistress' experience; with well-placed confidence he says to her, "You know what pleasure is, what is that to me? my heart assures me that this is not so."
[1232:] But an aged satyr, worn out with debauchery, with no charm, no consideration, no thought for any but himself, with no shred of honour, incapable and unworthy of finding favor in the eyes of any woman who knows anything of men deserving of love, expects to make up for all this with an innocent girl by trading on her inexperience and stirring her emotions for the first time. His last hope is to find favor as a novelty; no doubt this is the secret motive of this desire; but he is mistaken. The horror he excites is just as natural as the desires he wishes to arouse. He is also mistaken in his foolish attempt; that very nature takes care to assert her rights. Every girl who sells herself is no longer a maid; she has given herself to the man of her choice, and she is making the very comparison he dreads. The pleasure purchased is imaginary, but none the less hateful.
[1233:] For my own part, however riches may change me, there is one matter in which I shall never change. If I have neither morals nor virtue, I shall not be wholly without taste, without sense, without delicacy; and this will prevent me from spending my fortune in the pursuit of empty dreams, from wasting my money and my strength in teaching children to betray me and mock me. If I were young, I would seek the pleasures of youth; and since I would have them at their best I would not seek them in the guise of a rich man. If I were at my present age, it would be another matter; I would wisely confine myself to the pleasures of my age; I would form tastes that I could enjoy, and I would stifle those which could only cause suffering. I would not go and offer my gray beard to the scornful jests of young girls; I could never bear to sicken them with my disgusting caresses, to furnish them at my expense with the most absurd stories, to imagine them describing the vile pleasures of the old monkey so as to avenge. themselves for what they had endured. But if unresisted habits had changed my former desires into needs, I would perhaps satisfy those needs, but only with shame and blushes. I would distinguish between passion and necessity; I would find a suitable mistress and would stick to her. I would not make a business of my weakness, and above all I would only have one person aware of it. Life has other pleasures when these fail us; by hastening in vain after those that fly from us we deprive ourselves of those that remain. Let our tastes change with our years, let us no more meddle with age than with the seasons. We should be ourselves at all times instead of struggling against nature; such vain attempts exhaust our strength and prevent the right use of life.
[1234:] The lower classes are seldom dull, their life is full of activity. If there is little variety in their amusements they do not recur frequently; many days of labor teach them to enjoy their rare holidays. Short intervals of leisure between long periods of labor give a spice to the pleasures of their station. The chief curse of the rich is dullness; in the midst of costly amusements, among so many men striving to give them pleasure, they are devoured and slain by dullness; their life is spent in fleeing from it and in being overtaken by it. They are overwhelmed by the intolerable burden. Women more especially, who do not know how to work or play, are a prey to tedium under the name of the vapors. With them it takes the shape of a dreadful disease that robs them of their reason and even of their life. For my own part I know no more terrible fate than that of a pretty woman in Paris, unless it is that of the pretty dandy who devotes himself to her, who becomes idle and effeminate like her, and so deprives himself twice over of his manhood while he prides himself on his successes, and for their sake endures the longest and dullest days which human being ever put up with.
[1235:] Proprieties, fashions, customs which depend on luxury and breeding, confine the course of life within the limits of the most miserable uniformity. The pleasure we desire in display to others is a pleasure lost; we neither enjoy it ourselves, nor do others enjoy it.
[Note 39] Ridicule, which public opinion dreads more than anything, is always at hand to tyrannize and punish. It is only ceremony that makes us ridiculous; if we can vary our place and our pleasures, to-day's impressions can efface those of yesterday; in the mind of men they are as if they had never been. But we enjoy ourselves for we throw ourselves into every hour and everything. My only set rule would be this: wherever I was I would pay no heed to anything else. I would take each day as it came, as if there were neither yesterday nor to-morrow. As I would be a man of the people, with the populace, I would be a countryman in the fields; and if I spoke of farming, the peasant should not laugh at my expense. I would not go and build a town in the country nor erect the Tuileries at the door of my lodgings. On some pleasant shady hill-side I would have a little cottage, a white house with green shutters, and though a thatched roof is the best all the year round, I would be grand enough to have, not those gloomy slates, but tiles, because they look brighter and more cheerful than thatch, and the houses in my own country are always roofed with them, and so they would recall to me something of the happy days of my youth. For my courtyard I would have a poultry-yard, and for my stables a cowshed for the sake of the milk which I love. My garden would be a kitchen-garden, and my park an orchard, like the one described further on. The fruit would be free to those who walked in the orchard, my gardener would neither count it nor gather it; I would not, with greedy show, display before your eyes superb espaliers which one scarcely dare touch. But this small extravagance would not be costly, for I would choose my abode in some remote province where silver is scarce and food plentiful, where plenty and poverty have their seat.
[1236:] There I would gather round me a company, select rather than numerous, a band of friends who know what pleasure is, and how to enjoy it, women who can leave their arm-chairs and betake themselves to outdoor sports, women who can exchange the shuttle or the cards for the fishing line or the bird-trap, the gleaner's rake or grape-gatherer's basket. There all the pretensions of the town will be forgotten, and we will be villagers in a village; we wall find all sorts of different sports and we will hardly know how to choose the morrow's occupation. Exercise and an active life will improve our digestion and modify our tastes. Every meal will be a feast, where plenty will be more pleasing than any delicacies. There are no such cooks in the world as mirth, rural pursuits, and merry games; and the finest made dishes are quite ridiculous in the eyes of people who have been on foot since early dawn. Our meals will be served without regard to order or elegance; we will make our dining-room anywhere, in the garden, on a boat, beneath a tree; sometimes at a distance from the house on the banks of a running stream, on the fresh green grass, among the clumps of willow and hazel; a long procession of guests will carry the material for the feast with laughter and singing; the turf will be our chairs and table, the banks of the stream our side-board, and our dessert is hanging on the trees. The dishes will be served in any order; appetite needs no ceremony. Each one of us, openly putting himself first, would gladly see every one else do the same. From this warmhearted and temperate familiarity there would arise, without coarseness, pretence, or constraint, a laughing conflict a hundredfold more delightful than politeness, and more likely to cement our friend-ship. No tedious flunkeys to listen to our words, to whisper criticisms on our behavior, to count every mouthful with greedy eyes, to amuse themselves by keeping us waiting for our wine, to complain of the length of our dinner. We will be our own servants in order to be our own masters. Time will fly unheeded, our meal will be an interval of rest during the heat of the day. If some peasant comes our way, returning from his work with his tools over his shoulder, I will cheer his heart with kindly words and a glass or two of good wine, which will help him to bear his poverty more cheerfully; and I too will have the joy of feeling my heart stirred within me, and I would say to myself -- I too am a man.
[1237:] If the inhabitants of the district assembled for some rustic feast, I and my friends would be there among the first; if there were marriages, more blessed than those of towns, celebrated near my home, every one would know how I love to see people happy, and I should be invited. I would take these good folks some gift as simple as themselves, a gift which would be my share of the feast; and in exchange I would obtain gifts beyond price, gifts so little known among my equals, the gifts of freedom and true pleasure. I would sup gaily at the head of their long table; I would join in the chorus of some rustic song and I would dance in the barn more merrily than at a ball in the Opera House.
[1238:] "This is all very well so far," you will say, "but what about the shooting? One must have some sport in the country." Just so; I only wanted a farm, but I was wrong. I assume I am rich, I must keep my pleasures to myself, I must be free to kill something. This is quite another matter. I must have estates, woods, keepers, rents, seignorial rights, particularly incense and holy water.
[1239:] Well and good. But such an estate would have neighbors who are jealous of their rights and anxious to encroach on those of others; our keepers will quarrel, and possibly their masters will quarrel too. This means altercations, disputes, ill-will, or law-suits at the least; this in itself is not very pleasant. My tenants will not enjoy finding my hares at work upon their corn, or my wild boars among their beans. Since they dare not kill the enemy, every one of them will try to drive him from their fields; when the day has been spent in cultivating the ground, they will be compelled to sit up all night to watch it; they will have watch-dogs, drums, horns, and bells; my sleep will be disturbed by their racket. Do what I will, I cannot help thinking of the misery of these poor people, and I cannot help blaming myself for it. If I had the honour of being a prince, this would make little impression on me; but as I am a self-made man who has only just come into his property, I am still rather vulgar at heart.
[1240:] That is not all; abundance of game attracts trespassers. I would soon have poachers to punish; I would require prisons, gaolers, guards, and galleys; all this strikes me as cruel. The wives of those miserable creatures will besiege my door and disturb me with their crying; they must either be driven away or roughly handled. The poor people who are not poachers, whose harvest has been destroyed by my game, will come next with their complaints. Some people will be put to death for killing the game, the rest will be punished for having spared it; what a choice of evils! On every side I shall find nothing but misery and hear nothing but groans. So far as I can see this must greatly disturb the pleasure of massacring at one's ease flocks of partridges and hares which are tame enough to run about one's feet.
[1241:] Would you like to separate out the pleasures from thesw pains? Get rid of all exclusion; the more you leave it free to everybody, the purer will be your own enjoyment. Therefore I would not do what I have just described, but without change of tastes I would follow those which seem likely to cause me least pain. I would fix my rustic abode in a district where game is not preserved, and where I can have my sport without hindrance. Game will be less plentiful, but there will be more skill in finding it, and more pleasure in securing it. I remember the start of delight with which my father watched the rise of his first partridge and the rapture with which he found the hare he had sought all day long. Yes, I assure you that alone with his dog, carrying his own gun, cartridges, and game bag together with his hare, he came home at nightfall, worn out with fatigue and torn to pieces by brambles, but better pleased with his day's sport than all your ordinary sportsmen, who on a good horse, with twenty guns ready for them, merely take one gun after another, and shoot and kill everything that comes their way, without skill, without glory, and almost without exercise. The pleasure is noy less, and the difficulties are removed; there is no estate to be preserved, no poacher to be punished, and no wretches to be tormented. Here are solid grounds for preference. Whatever you do, you cannot torment men for ever without experiencing some amount of discomfort; and sooner or later the muttered curses of the people will spoil the flavor of your game.
[1242:] Again, monopoly destroys pleasure. Real pleasures are those which we share with the crowd; we lose what we try to keep to ourselves alone. If the walls I build round my park transform it into a gloomy prison, I have only deprived myself, at great expense, of the pleasure of a walk; I must now seek that pleasure at a distance. The demon of property spoils everything he lays hands upon. A rich man wants to be master everywhere, and he is never happy where he is; he is continually driven to flee from himself. I shall therefore continue to do in my prosperity what I did in my poverty. Henceforward, richer in the wealth of others than I ever shall be in my own wealth, I will take possession of everything in my neighborhood that takes my fancy; no conqueror is so determined as I. I even usurp the rights of princes; I take possession of every open place that pleases me, I give them names; this is my park, that is my terrace, and I am their owner. Henceforward I wander among them at will. I often return to maintain my proprietary rights; I make what use I choose of the ground to walk upon, and you will never convince me that the nominal owner of the property which I have appropriated gets better value out of the money it yields him than I do out of his land. No matter if I am interrupted by hedges and ditches; I take my park on my back, and I carry it elsewhere. There will be space enough for it near at hand, and I may plunder my neighbors long enough before I outstay my welcome.
[1243:] This is an attempt to show what is meant by good taste in the choice of pleasant occupations for our leisure hours. This is the spirit of enjoyment. All else is illusion, fancy, and foolish pride. He who disobeys these rules, however rich he may be, will devour his gold on a dung-hill, and will never know what it is to live.
[1244:] You will say, no doubt, that such amusements lie within the reach of all, that we need not be rich to enjoy them. That is the very point I was coming to. Pleasure is ours when we want it; it is only social prejudice which makes everything hard to obtain, and drives pleasure before us. To be happy is a hundredfold easier than it seems. If he really desires to enjoy himself the man of taste has no need of riches; all he wants is to be free and to be his own master. With health and daily bread we are rich enough, if we will but get rid of our prejudices; this is the "Golden Mean" of Horace. You folks with your strong-boxes may find some other use for your wealth, for it cannot buy you pleasure. Emile knows this as well as I, but his heart is purer and more healthy, so he will feel it more strongly, and all that he has beheld in society will only serve to confirm him in this opinion.
[1245:] While our time is thus employed, we are ever on the lookout for Sophy, and we have not yet found her. It was not desirable that she should be found too easily, and I have taken care to look for her where I knew we should not find her.
[1246:] The time is come; we must now seek her in earnest, in case Emile should mistake some one else for Sophy and only discover his error when it is too late. Then farewell Paris, far-famed Paris, with all your noise and smoke and dirt, where the women have ceased to believe in honour and the men in virtue. We are in search of love, happiness, innocence; the further we go from Paris the better.
[1247:] Here we have reached the last act of youth's drama, but we are not yet at its final scene.
[1248:] Man should not be alone. Emile is now a man. We have promised him a companion; we must give her to him. That companion is Sophie. What kind of a home does she have? Where will we find her? In order to find her, we must be able to recognize her. So let us first know what she is, and then we can better judge where she lives. And when we have found her, still our task is not ended. "Our young gentleman," said Locke, "is about to marry, so it is time to leave him with his mistress," and with these words he ended his book. Since I do not have the honor of educating "a young gentleman," I will take care not to imitate him in this regard.
[1249:] SOPHIE, OR THE WIFE
[1250:] Sophie should be a woman as Emile is a man. That is to say, she should have everything that suits the constitution of her species and of her sex so as to take her place in the physical and moral order. Let us begin, therefore, by examining the similarities and differences between her sex and ours.
[1251:] In all that does not relate to sex , woman is man. She has the same organs, the same needs, the same faculties. The machine is constructed in the same manner, the parts are the same, the workings of the one are the same as the other, and the appearance of the two is similar. From whatever aspect one considers them, they differ only by degree.
[1252:] In all that does relate to sex, woman and man are in every way related and in every way different. The difficulty in comparing them comes from the difficulty of determining what in the constitution of both comes from sex and what does not. By comparative anatomy and even by mere inspection one can find general differences between them that seem to be unrelated to sex. However these differences do relate to sex through connections that we cannot perceive. How far such differences may extend we cannot tell. All we know for certain is that everything in common between men and women must come from their species and everything different must come from their sex. From this double point of view we find so many relations and so many oppositions that perhaps one of nature's greatest marvels is to have been able to make two beings so similar while constituting them so differently.
[1253:] These relations and differences must influence morals. Such a deduction is both obvious and in accordance with experience, and it shows the vanity of the disputes concerning preferences or the equality of the sexes. As if each sex, pursuing the path marked out for it by nature, were not more perfect in that very divergence than if it more closely resembled the other! In those things which the sexes have in common they are equal; where they differ they are not comparable. A perfect woman and a perfect man should no more be alike in mind than in face, and perfection admits of neither less nor more.
[1254:] In the union of the sexes, each alike contributes to the common end but not in the same way. From this diversity springs the first difference which may be observed in the moral relations between the one and the other. The one should be active and strong, the other passive and weak. It is necessary that the one have the power and the will; it is enough that the other should offer little resistance.
[1255:] Once this principle is established it follows that woman is specially made to please man. If man ought to please her in turn, the necessity is less urgent. His merit is in his power; he pleases because he is strong. This is not the law of love, I admit, but it is the law of nature, which is older than love itself.
[1256:] If woman is made to please and to be subjected, she ought to make herself pleasing to man instead of provoking him. Her strength is in her charms; by their means she should compel him to discover his strength and to use it. The surest way of arousing this strength is to make it necessary by resistance. Then amour-propre joins with desire, and the one triumphs from a victory that the other made him win. This is the origin of attack and defense, of the boldness of one sex and the timidity of the other, and even of the shame and modesty with which nature has armed the weak for the conquest of the strong.
[1257:] Who could imagine that nature arbitrarily prescribed the same advances to both, or that the first to feel desire should be the first to show it! What a strange perversion of judgment! The consequences of the act being so different for the two sexes, would it be natural for them to engage in it with equal boldness? How can any one not see that with such a great disparity in the common stakes, if reserve did not impose on one sex the moderation that nature imposes on the other, the result would be the destruction of both, and the human race would perish through the very means established for preserving it? With the facility women have of arousing men's senses and of awakening in the depths of their hearts feelings that were thought to have died, if there were some unlucky country where philosophy had introduced this custom (especially if it were a hot climate where more women are born than men), the men would be tyrannized over by the women. They would eventually become their victims and would find themselves dragged to their death without ever being able to defend themselves.
[1258:] Yet female animals are without this sense of shame and what is the result? Do they, like women, have the same unlimited desires that shame serves to curb? With female animals, their desire comes only with need. When the need is satisfied, the desire ceases and they no longer make a pretense of repulsing the male but do it for real.
[Note 1] They do exactly the contrary of what the daughter of Augustus did; once the boat is filled with cargo, they refuse to take on more passengers. Even when animals are free the period of their willingness is very short and soon over; instinct gets them going and instinct stops them. What would substitute for this negative instinct in women if you were to rob them of their modesty? To wait for them to lose interest in men is to wait for them to be good for nothing.
[1259:] The Supreme Being has wanted to do honour to the human species. By giving man limitless impulses he has at the same time given him a law to regulate them so that man can be free and can control himself. While granting him immoderate passions, he joins reason to these passions as a means of governing them. While granting unlimited desires to women, the Supreme Being joins modesty to her desires as a means of restraining them. In addition, it has added an actual bonus for using these faculties well, which is the taste one develops for decency when one makes it the rule of one's actions. All of this is worth more, it seems to me, than the instincts of animals.
[1260:] Whether the human female shares the man's desires or not, whether she is willing or unwilling to satisfy them, still she always pushes him away and defends herself, though not always with the same force nor consequently with the same success. In order for the attacker to be victorious, the one attacked must permit it or order it -- for how many skillful ways are there to stimulate the efforts of the aggressor? The freest and sweetest of acts does not permit of any real violence; indeed both reason and nature are against it -- nature, in that it has given the weakest enough strength to resist when she pleases; reason, in that real violence is not only the most brutal of acts but the one most contrary to its own ends, not only because the man thus declares war against his companion and hence gives her a right to defend her person and her liberty even at the cost of the aggressor's life, but also because the woman alone is the judge of her condition, and a child would have no father if any man might usurp a father's rights.
[1261:] Here then is a third consequence of the constitution of the sexes, which is that the stronger is the master in all appearance and yet in effect depends on the weaker. And this is not due to any frivolous custom of gallantry nor to any prideful generosity on the part of the protector, but to an invariable law of nature which, by giving the woman more of a facility to excite desires than man has to satisfy them, makes him dependent on her whether she likes it or not and forces him in turn to please her in order to obtain her consent to let him be the strongest. Is it weakness which yields to force, or is it voluntary self-surrender? This uncertainty constitutes the chief charm of the man's victory, and the woman usually has enough guile to leave him in doubt. In this respect the woman's mind exactly resembles her body; far from being ashamed of her weakness, she is glories in it. Her soft muscles offer no resistance, she professes that she cannot lift the lightest weight; she would be ashamed to be strong. And why? It is not only in order to appear delicate; it is for the sake of a more clever precaution. She is providing herself beforehand with excuses and with the right to be weak when it is necessary.
[1262:] The progress of enlightenment acquired through our vices has considerably changed the the earlier opinions held among us on this point, and one hardly hears speak any more of cases of sexual violence since they are so seldom needed and because men no longer would believe them.* Yet such stories are common enough among the ancient Greeks and Jews, for such views belong to the simplicity of nature; it is only the experience of libertinage that has been able to uproot them.
[Note 2] If fewer acts of violence are cited in our days, it is surely not because men are more temperate. It is because they are less credulous, and a complaint which would have persuaded simple people would provoke only mocking laughter among ourselves. Therefore silence is the better course. In the Book of Deuteronomy in the Bible there is a law under which the abused maiden was punished along with her seducer if the crime were committed in a town, but if in the country or in a lonely place, the latter alone was punished. "For," says the law, "the maiden cried for help but was not heard." From this benign interpretation of the law, girls learned not to let themselves be surprised in well-frequented places.
[1263:] The effect of these divergent opinions on morals is obvious. The main result has been the appearance of modern gallantry. Having found that their pleasures depend more than they expected on the good will of the fair sex, men have secured this good will by attentions which have had their reward.
[1264:] See how the physical leads us unconsciously to the moral, and how from the gross union of the sexes gradually arise the sweet laws of love. Women have held onto their power not because men have wished it but because nature wishes it; the power was their's even before they appeared to have it. The same Hercules who believed he could violate all the fifty daughters of Thespis was nevertheless forced to spin wool for Omphale; and Samson the Strong was never as strong as Delilah. Women's power cannot be taken from them even when they abuse it; if they could ever have lost it they would have lost it long ago.
[1265:] There is no parity between the two sexes when it comes to the consequence of sex. The male is only a male in certain instances; the female is female all her life or at least all her youth. Everything reminds her of her sex, and to fulfill well her functions she needs a constitution that relates to them. She needs care during pregnancy and rest when her child is born; she must have a quiet, sedentary life while she nurses her children; their education calls for patience and gentleness, for a zeal and affection which nothing can dismay. She serves as a liason between them and their father; she alone can make him love them and give him the confidence to call them his own. What tenderness and care is required to maintain a whole family as a unit! And finally all this must not come from virtues but from feelings without which the human species would soon be extinct.
[1266:] The severity to the duties relative to the two sexes is not and cannot be the same. When a woman complains in this regard about the unjust inequality in which men are placed, she is wrong. This inequality is not at all a human institution, or at least it is not the work of prejudice but of reason. The one to whom nature has entrusted children must answer for them to the other. No doubt it is not permitted to anyone to violate his faith, and every unfaithful husband who deprives his wife of the sole reward of the austere duties of her sex is an unjust and cruel man. But the unfaithful wife does more; she dissolves the family and breaks the bonds of nature. By giving the man children that are not his own she betrays all of them; she adds treachery to infidelity. It is hard to imagine any disorder or crime which would not follow from that. If there is one terrible position to be in it is that of a miserable father who cannot trust his wife, dares not give in to the sweetest sentiments of his heart, and who wonders while embracing his child whether he may be embracing the child of someone else -- a proof of his dishonor, a robber of his own children's inheritance. What is such a family if not a society of secret enemies armed against each other by a guilty wife who forces them to pretend to love each other?
[1267:] It is thus not only important that the wife be faithful but that she be judged so by her husband, by those near him, by everyone. She must be modest, attentive, reserved, and she must have in others' eyes as in her own conscience the evidence of her virtue. If it is important that a father love his children, it is important that he respect their mother. Such are the reasons that put appearance on the list of the duties of women and make honor and reputation no less indispensable to them than chastity. Along with the moral differences between the sexes these principles give rise to a new motive for duty and convenience, one that prescribes especially for women the most scrupulous attention to their conduct, to their manners, to their behavior. To maintain vaguely that the two sexes are equal and that their duties are the same is to get lost in vain speeches. One hardly need to respond to all that.
[1268:] Do you really think you are on solid ground when you try to find exceptions to such well-founded general laws? Women, you say, do not always have children. No, but their proper aim is to do so. Just because there are a hundred or so large cities in the world where women live licentiously and have few children
[Note 3] can you claim that their role is to have few children? And what would become of your cities if the remote country districts, where women live more simply and more chastely, did not make up for the sterility of your fine ladies? There are plenty of country places where women with only four or five children are reckoned as being not very fertile. Finally, although here and there a woman may have few children, what difference does it make? Is it any the less a woman's role to be a mother? And do not the general laws of nature and morality make provision for this state of things?
[1269:] Even if there were these long intervals, which you assume, between the periods of pregnancy, can a woman suddenly change her way of life without danger and without risk? Can she be a nursing mother to-day and a warrior tomorrow? Will she change her tastes and her feelings as a chameleon changes its color? Will she pass at once from being sheltered and enclosed with household duties, to facing the harshness of the winds, the toils, the fatiques, the perils of war? Will she be first timid,**
[Note 4] then brave, first fragile, then robust? If the young men raised in Paris have a hard time enduring a soldier's life, how would a woman who for fifty years has never been exposed to hot sun and can hardly walk on her own endure it? Would she take on this difficult profession at the age when men are retiring from it?
[1270:] There are countries, I grant you, where women bear children almost without pain and nurture them almost without worry, but in these same countries the men go half-naked in all weathers, they hunt down wild beasts, carry a canoe as easily as a knapsack, pursue game for 700 or 800 leagues, sleep in the open on the bare ground, bear incredible weariness and go many days without food. When women become strong, men become even stronger; when men become soft, women become softer. When the two terms change equally, the difference stays the same.
[1271:] I am quite aware that Plato in the Republicassigns the same gymnastics to women and men. Having rid his government of private families and knowing not what to do with the women, he was forced to make them into men. That great genius has figured out everything and foreseen everything; he has even thought ahead to an objection that perhaps no one would ever have raised; but he has not succeeded in meeting the real difficulty. I am not speaking of the alleged community of wives, the oft-repeated reproach concerning which only shows that those who make it have never read his works. I refer to the civil promiscuity which everywhere brings the two sexes in the same occupations, the same work, and could not fail to engender the most intolerable abuses. I refer to that subversion of all the tenderest of our natural feelings, which are sacrificed to an artificial sentiment that can only exist by their aid. As if a natural bond were not required in order to form conventional ties; or that love for one's relations were not the basis for the love that one owes to the state; or that it is not through one's attachment to the small society of the family that the heart becomes attached to the larger society of one's nation; or that it is not the good son, the good husband, the good father who makes a good citizen!
[1272:] Once it is demonstrated that men and women neither are nor ought to be constituted the same, either in character or in temperament, it follows that they ought not to have the same education. In following the directions of nature they ought to act together, but they ought not to do the same things. The purpose of their tasks is the same, but the tasks are different, as are also the feelings that direct them. After having tried to form the natural man, in order not to leave our work incomplete let us see how to also to form the woman who suits this man.
[1273:] Do you wish always to be guided well? Then always follow the path that nature indicates. Everything that characterizes sex ought to be respected as established by nature. You are always saying, "Women have such and such faults that we do not have." Your pride fools you. These may be faults for you, but they are qualities for them; and everything would go less well if they were without them. Take care that these so-called faults do not degenerate, but be sure not to destroy them.
[1274:] On their part women are always complaining that we educate them to be vain and coguettish, that we keep them amused with silly things so that we may remain their masters. We are responsible, so they say, for the faults we attribute to them. How insane! Since when do men bother with the education of girls? What is there to hinder their mothers educating them as they please? There are no colleges for girls; so much the better for them! Would to God that there were none for the boys; their education would be more sensible and more wholesome. Does anyone force your daughters to waste their time on silliness? Are they made, against their will, to spend half their time at their dressing table, following the example set them by you? Does anyone prevent you from teaching them, or having them taught, whatever seems good in your eyes? Is it our fault if we are pleased when they are beautiful, if their mincing ways seduce us, if the art that they learn attracts and flatters us, if we like to seen them tastefully dressed, if we let them display at leisure the weapons by which we are subjugated? Well then, decide to educate them like men; men will heartily consent. The more women ressemble men, the less influence they will have over them, and then the men will truly be the masters.
[1275:] All the faculties common to both sexes are not equally shared between, them, but taken as a whole they compensate for each other. Woman is worth more as a woman and less as a man. When she makes a good use of her own rights, she has the advantage; when she tries to usurp our rights, she stays beneath us. It is impossible to go against this general truth except by quoting exceptions, which is the usual manner of argumentation by partisans of the fair sex.
[1276:] To cultivate the masculine virtues in women and to neglect their own is obviously to do them an injury. Women are too clear-sighted to be thus deceived. When they try to usurp our privileges they do not abandon their own. But the result is that being unable to manage the two, because they are incompatible, they fall below their own potential without reaching our's and loose half of their worth. Believe me, wise mother, do not try to make your daughter a good man in defiance of nature. Make her a good woman, and be sure it will be better both for her and us.
[1277:] Does this mean that she must be brought up in ignorance and kept to housework only? Will man make a servant out of his companion, will he deprive himself in her presence of the greatest charm of society? To keep her a slave will he prevent her from feeling and knowing? Will he make an automaton of her? No, indeed, that is not the teaching of nature, which has given women such an agreeable and agile mind. On the contrary, nature means them to think, to judge, to love, to know things, to cultivate their minds as well as their persons; nature puts these weapons in their hands to make up for their lack of strength and to enable them to direct the strength of men. They should learn many things, but only such things as are suitable.
[1278:] When I consider the special purpose of woman, when I observe her inclinations or count her duties, everything combines to indicate the form of education that suits her. Men and women are made for each other, but their mutual dependence is not equal. Man is dependent on woman through his desires; woman is dependent on man through her desires and also through her needs. He could do without her better than she can do without him. For women to have what is necessary to them; for them to fulfill their role we must provide for them, we must want to provide for them, we must believe them to be worthy of it. They are dependent on our feelings, on the price we put upon their merits, and on the opinion we have of their charms and their virtues. By the law of nature women, for their own sakes as well as for the sake of their children, are at the mercy of the judgment of men. Worth alone will not suffice, a woman must be thought worthy; nor beauty, she must be admired; nor wisdom, she must he respected. Their honnor is not only in their conduct but in their reputation, and it is not possible that one who lets herself be seen as disreputable can ever be good. When a man does the right thing he only depends on himself and can defy public judgment, but when a woman does the right thing she has done only half of her task, and what people think of her is not less important than what she in effect is. Hence her education must, in this respect, be the contrary of our's. Public opinion is the grave of a man's virtue and the throne of a woman's.
[1279:] The children's health depends in the first place on the mother's, and the early education of man is also in a woman's hands. His morals, his passions, his tastes, his pleasures, his happiness itself, depend on her. Thus all the education of women must be relative to men. To please them, to be useful to them, to make oneself loved and honored by them, to raise them when they are young, to care for them when they are grown, to advise them, console them, make their life pleasant and sweet -- these are the duties of women at all times and what one ought to teach them from their childhood. The further we depart from this principle, the further we shall be from our goal, and all the precepts given her will fail to secure her happiness or our's.
[1280:] But although every woman wants to please men and ought to want to do so, there is a great difference between wanting to please a man of worth, a really lovable man, and wanting to please these little dandies who are a disgrace to their own sex and to the sex which they imitate. Neither nature nor reason can induce a woman to love an effeminate person, nor will she win love by imitating such a person.
[1281:] When thus she abandons the modest tone and pose of her sex and takes on the airs of such foolish creatures, she is not following her vocation, she is forsaking it. She is robbing herself of the rights to which she lays claim. "If we were different," she says, "men would not like us." She is mistaken. Only a fool likes folly; to wish to attract such men only shows her own poor taste. If there were no frivolous men, women would soon make them, and women are more responsible for men's follies than men are for theirs. The woman who loves real men and wants to please them will adopt means adapted to her ends. Woman's role is to be a coquette, but her coquetry varies with her aims. Let these aims be in accordance with those of nature, and a woman will receive a fitting education.
[1282:] Almost as soon as they are born little girls love dressing up. Not content to be pretty, they must be admired. You can see by their their little airs that this concern preoccupies them already, and even when they can barely understand you, you can control them by telling them what people will think of them. If you are foolish enough to try this way with little boys, it will not have the same effect. Give them their freedom and their sports, and they care very little what people think of them. It is only the work of time and much effort that one subjects them to this same law.
[1283:] From whatever source it comes, this first lesson in very good for girls. Since the body is born, so to speak, before the soul, the first nurturing must be that of the body. This order is common to the two sexes but the aim of this nurturing is different: in the one this aim is the development of strength, in the other of grace. Not that these qualities should he exclusive to either sex, but their order is reversed. Women should be strong enough to do anything gracefully; men should be skillful enough to do anything easily.
[1284:] The exaggeration of feminine delicacy leads to effeminacy in men. Women should not be strong like men but for them, so that their sons may be strong. Convents and boarding-schools, with their plain food and ample opportunities for activities, races, and games in the open air and in the garden, are better in this respect than the home, where the little girl is fed on delicacies, continually flattered or scolded, where she is kept sitting in a stuffy room, always under her mother's eye, afraid to stand or walk or speak or breathe, without a moment's freedom to play or jump or run or shout, or to be her natural, lively, little self. There is either harmful indulgence or misguided severity, and no trace of reason. This is how both the body and the mind of youth are ruined.
[1285:] In Sparta the girls used to take part in military sports just like the boys, not that they might go to war, but that they might bear sons who could endure hardship. That is not what I desire. To provide the state with soldiers it is not necessary that the mother should carry a musket and learn Prussian drills. Yet, on the whole, I think the Greeks were very wise in this matter of physical training. Young girls frequently appeared in public, not with the boys, but in groups apart. There was hardly a festival, a sacrifice, or a procession without its bands of maidens, the daughters of the chief citizens. Crowned with flowers, chanting hymns, forming the chorus of the dance, bearing baskets, vases, offerings, they presented a charming spectacle to the depraved senses of the Greeks, a spectacle well fitted to erase the evil effects of their indecent gymnastics. Whatever impression this custom may have made on the hearts of the men, it was well fitted to develop in the women a sound constitution by means of pleasant, moderate, and healthy exercise. Meanwhile the desire to please would develop a keen and cultivated taste without risk to character.
[1286:] As soon as Greek women married they were no longer seen in public. Within the four walls of their home they devoted themselves to the care of their household and family. This is the mode of life prescribed for the female sex both by nature and by reason. These women gave birth to the healthiest, strongest, and best proportioned men who ever lived, and except in certain islands of ill repute, no women in the whole world, not even the Roman matrons, were ever at once so wise and so charming, so beautiful and so virtuous, as the women of ancient Greece.
[1287:] It is admitted that their flowing garments, which did not cramp the figure, preserved in men and women alike the fine proportions which are seen in their statues. These are still the models of art, although nature is so disfigured that they are no longer to be found among us. The Gothic fetters, the innumerable bands which confine our limbs as in a press, were quite unknown. The Greek women were wholly unacquainted with those frames of whalebone in which our women distort rather than display their figures. It seems to me that this abuse, which is carried to an incredible degree of folly in England, must sooner or later lead to the production of a degenerate race. Moreover, I maintain that the charm which these corsets are supposed to produce is in the worst possible taste: it is not a pleasant thing to see a woman cut in two like a wasp; it offends both the eye and the imagination. A slender waist has its limits, like everything else, in proportion and suitability, and beyond these limits it becomes a defect. This defect would be a glaring one in the nude; why should it be beautiful under the costume?
[1288:] I dare not speculate on the reasons which induce women to incase themselves in these coats of mail. A sagging breast, a large waist, etc. are no doubt displeasing at twenty, but at thirty they cease to be shocking. And since in spite of ourselves we are bound at all times to be the way nature has made us, and since there is no deceiving the eye of man, such defects are less offensive at any age than the foolish affectations of a young thing of forty.
[1289:] Everything which cramps and confines nature is in bad taste; this is as true of the adornments of the person as of the ornaments of the mind. Life, health, common-sense, and comfort must come first. There is no grace in discomfort, languor is not refinement, there is no charm in ill-health. Suffering may excite pity, but pleasure and delight demand the freshness of health.
[1290:] The children of both sexes have many games in common, and this is as it should be. Do they not play together when they are grown up? They have also special tastes of their own. Boys want movement and noise, drums, tops, toy-carts; girls prefer things which appeal to the eye, and can be used for dressing-up -- mirrors, jewelry, finery, and especially dolls. The doll is the girl's special plaything; this very obviously shows her instinctive taste for her life's purpose. The physical aspect of the art of pleasing is found in one's dress, and this physical side of the art is the only one that the child can cultivate.
[1291:] Watch a little girl spend a day with her doll, continually changing its clothes, dressing and undressing it, trying new combinations of trimmings either well or poorly matched. Her fingers are clumsy, her taste is crude, but already a tendency is shown in this endless occupation. Time passes without her knowing it, hours go by, even meals are forgotten. She is more eager for adornment than for food. "But she is dressing her doll, not herself," you will say. Of course; she sees her doll, she cannot see herself; she cannot do anything for herself, she has neither the training, nor the talent, nor the strength. So far she herself is nothing, she is engrossed in her doll and all her coquetry is devoted to it. This will not always be so; in due time she will be her own doll.
[1292:] Here we thus can see a well-directed early inclination; you have only to follow it and train it. What the little girl would like with all her heart is to be able to dress her doll, to make its bows, its shawls, its flounces, and its lace. She is dependent on other people's kindness in all this, and it would be much easier to be able to do it herself. Here is a motive for her earliest lessons; they are not tasks prescribed, but favors bestowed. And in effect while most little girls only reluctantly learn to read and write, when it comes to sewing they learn gladly. They think they are grown up, and take pleasure in believing that these talents will one day serve them for their own adornment.
[1293:] This first open path is easy to follow; cutting out, embroidery, lace-making come naturally. Needlepoint is not popular, for furniture is too remote from the child's interests; it has nothing to do with the person, it depends on conventional tastes. Needlepoint is a woman's amusement; young girls never get real pleasure from it.
[1294:] These voluntary courses are easily extended to include drawing, an art which is closely connected with taste in dress; but I would not have them taught landscape and still less figure painting. Leaves, fruit, flowers, draperies, anything that will make an elegant trimming for her accessories and enable the girl to design her own embroidery if she cannot find a pattern to her taste -- that will be quite enough. Speaking generally, if it is desirable to restrict a man's studies to what is useful, this is even more necessary for women. For a woman's life, though less laborious, is, or should be, even more devoted to her responsibilities and more divided up into a variety of concerns, and does not permit them to give themselves over to any one chosen talent at the expense of her duties.
[1295:] Whatever may be said by the jokesters, good sense belongs equally to both sexes. Girls are usually more docile than boys, and they should be subjected to more authority, as I shall show later on, but that is no reason why they should be required to do things that seem to have no usefulness. The art of being a mother consists in showing the usefulness of everything she undertakes to do, and this is all the easier since the intelligence of girls is more precocious than that of boys. This principle eliminates, both for boys and girls, not only those idle studies that lead to nothing good and do not make those who pursue them more agreeable to others, but also those studies whose usefulness is beyond the student's present age and can only be appreciated in later years. If I object to little boys being made to learn to read, still more do I object to it for little girls until they are able to see the use of reading. And in our attempts to convince them of the usefulness of this art we generally think more of our own ideas than theirs. After all, why should a little girl know early on how to read and write? Dos she already have a house to manage? There are more who abuse this fatal knowledge than use it well, and girls are too full of curiosity not to learn on their own whenever they have the time and opportunity to do so. Possibly arithmetic should come first; there is nothing so obviously useful, nothing which needs so much practice or gives so much opportunity for error as keeping accounts. If the little girl will not get cherries for her lunch unless she does an arithmetical exercise, I asure you that she will soon learn to count.
[1296:] I once knew a little girl who learned to write before she could read, and she began to write with her needle. To begin with, she would write nothing but 0's; she was always making 0's, large and small, of all kinds and one within another, but always drawn backwards. Unluckily one day she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror while she was at this useful work, and thinking that the cramped attitude was not pretty, like another Minerva she threw away her pen and refused to make any more 0's. Her brother was no fonder of writing, but what he disliked was the constraint, not the look of the thing. She was brought back to her writing in the following way: the child was fastidious and vain; she could not bear her sisters to wear her clothes. Her things had been labeled; no one would agree to label them for her any more, so she had to learn to label them herself. You can imagine the rest of the story.
[1297:] Always justify the tasks you set your little girls, but keep them busy. Idleness and insubordination are two very dangerous faults, and very hard to cure when once established. Girls should be vigilant and hardworking, but this is not enough by itself; they should be accustomed to annoyances early on. This misfortune, if such it be, is inherent in their sex, and they will never escape from it, unless to endure much more cruel sufferings. For their entire life they will have to submit to the most continual and most severe annoyances, those of proper decorum. They must be trained to bear constraint from the first, so that it costs them nothing, to master their own fantasies in order to submit to the will of others. If they are always eager to be at work, they should sometimes be forced to do nothing. Dissipation, frivolity, inconstancy are faults that can easily arise from their first corrupted and unchecked tastes. To guard against this, teach them above all to control themselves. Under our insane institutions, the life of a good woman is a perpetual struggle against her self. It is only fair that woman should bear her share of the ills she has brought upon man.
[See key note in OC p. 1638-9]
[1298:] Prevent young girls from getting bored with their tasks and infatuated with their amusements. This often happens under our ordinary methods of education, where, as Fénelon says, all the tedium is on one side and all the pleasure on the other. If the rules already laid down are followed, the first of these dangers will be avoided, unless the child dislikes the people around her. A little girl who is fond of her mother or her friend will work by her side all day without getting tired; the chatter alone will make up for any loss of liberty. But if her companion is unbearable to her, everything done under her direction will be distasteful too. Children who take no delight in their mother's company are not likely to turn out well; but to judge of their real feelings you must watch them and not trust to thcir words alone, for they are flatterers and deceitful and soon learn to conceal their thoughts. Neither should they be told that they ought to love their mother. Affection is not the result of duty, and in this respect constraint is out of place. Continual attachment, constant care, habit itself, all these will lead a child to love her mother as long as the mother does nothing to deserve the child's hate. The very control she exercises over the child, if well directed, will increase rather than diminish the affection, for women being made for dependence, girls feel themselves made to obey.
[1299:] For the same reason that they have, or ought to have, little freedom, they are apt to indulge themselves too fully with regard to such freedom as they do have. They carry everything to extremes, and they devote themselves to their games with an enthusiasm even greater than that of boys. This is the second difficulty to which I referred. This enthusiasm must be kept in check, for it is the source of several vices commonly found among women -- caprice and that extravagant admiration which leads a woman to regard a thing with rapture to-day and to be quite indifferent to it to-morrow. This fickleness of taste is as dangerous as exaggeration; and both spring from the same cause. Do not deprive them of mirth, laughter, noise, and romping games, but do not let them tire of one game and go off to another; do not leave them for a moment without restraint. Accustom them to interrupt their games and return to their other occupations without a murmur. Habit is all that is needed, since you have nature on your side.
[1300:] This habitual restraint produces a docility which woman requires all her life, for she will always be in subjection to a man, or to man's judgment, and she will never be free to set her own opinion above his. What is most wanted in a woman is gentleness. Formed to obey a creature so imperfect as man, a creature often vicious and always faulty, she should early learn to submit to injustice and to suffer the wrongs inificted on her by her husband without complaint. She must be gentle for her own sake, not his. Bitterness and obstinacy only multiply the sufferings of the wife and the misdeeds of the husband; the man feels that these are not the weapons to be used against him. Heaven did not make women attractive and persuasive that they might degenerate into bitterness, or meek that they should desire the mastery; their soft voice was not meant for hard words, nor their delicate features for the frowns of anger. When they lose their temper they forget themselves. Often enough they have just cause of complaint; but when they scold they always put themselves in the wrong. Each should adopt the tone that befits his or her sex. A too gentle husband may make his wife impertinant, but unless a man is a monster, the gentleness of a woman will bring him around and sooner or later will win him over.
[1301:] Daughters must always be obedient, but mothers need not always be harsh. To make a girl docile you need not make her miserable; to make her modest you need not terrify her. On the contrary, I should not be sorry to see her allowed occasionally to exercise a little ingenuity, not to escape punishment for her disobedience, but to evade the necessity for obedience. Her dependence need not be made unpleasant; it is enough that she should realise that she is dependent. Cunning is a natural gift of woman, and so convinced am I that all our natural inclinations are right, that I would cultivate this among others, only guarding against its abuse.
[1302:] For the truth of this I appeal to every honest observer. I do not ask you to question women themselves; our cramping institutions can compel them to sharpen their wits. I would have you examine girls, little girls, newly-born so to speak. Compare them with boys of the same age, and I am greatly mistaken if you do not find the little boys heavy, silly, and foolish, in comparison. Let me give one illustration in all its childish simplicity.
[1303:] Children are commonly forbidden to ask for anything at table, for people think they can do nothing better in the way of education than to burden them with useless precepts -- as if a little bit of this or that were not readily given or refused*
[Note 5] without leaving a poor child dying of greediness intensified by hope. Every one knows about the little boy brought up in this way who when he had been overlooked at table asked for salt, etc. I do not suppose any one will blame him for asking directly for salt and indirectly for meat; the neglect was so cruel that I hardly think he would have been punished had he broken the rule and said plainly that he was hungry. But this is what I saw done by a little girl of six. The circumstances were much more difficult, for not only was she strictly forbidden to ask for anything directly or indirectly, but disobedience would have been unpardonable, for she had tasted every dish except one, and on this she had set her heart.
[1304:] This is what she did to repair the omission without laying herself open to the charge of disobedience. She pointed to every dish in turn, saying, "I've had some of that; I've had some of that." However she omitted the one dish so markedly that some one noticed it and said, "Have not you had some of this?" "Oh, no," replied the greedy little girl with soft voice and downcast eyes. I'll add nothing more; just compare: the latter trick shows the cunning of a girl, the other is the cunning of a boy..
[1305:] What is, is good, and no general law can be bad. The special skill with which the female sex is endowed is a fair equivalent for its lack of strength; without it woman would be man's slave, not his helpmeet. By her superiority in this respect she maintains her equality with man and rules in obedience. She has everything against her-- our faults and her own weakness and timidity. Her beauty and her wiles are all that she has. Should she not cuitivate both? Yet beauty is not universal; it may be destroyed by all sorts of accidents, it will disappear with years, and habit will destroy its influence. A woman's real resource is her wit, not that foolish wit which is so greatly admired in society, a wit which does nothing to make life happier, but that wit which is adapted to her condition, the art of taking advantage of our position and controlling us through our own strength. Words cannot tell how beneficial this is to man, what a charm it gives to the society of men and women, how it checks the petulant child and restrains the brutal husband. Wthout it the home would be a scene of strife; with it, it is the abode of happiness. I know that this power is abused by the sly and the spiteful; but what is there that is not liable to abuse? Do not destroy the means of happiness simply because bad people sometimes use them to hurt us.
[1306:] One may attract notice with one's dress, but it is the person that wins our hearts. Our finery is not us; its very artificiality often offends, and that which is least noticeable in itself often wins the most attention. The education of our girls is, in this respect, absolutely contradictory. Jewelry is promised them as a reward, and they are taught to delight in elaborate finery. "How lovely she is!" people say when she is most dressed up. On the contrary, girls should be taught that so much finery is only required to hide their defects, and that beauty's real triumph is to shine alone. The love of fashion is contrary to good taste, for faces do not change with the fashion, and while the person remains unchanged, what suits it at one time will suit it always.
[1307:] If I saw a young girl decked out like a little peacock, I would show myself anxious about her figure being so disguised, and anxious what people would think of her. I would say, "She is over-dressed with all those accessories; what a pity! Do you think she could do with something simpler? Is she pretty enough to do without all that?" Possibly she herself would be the first to ask that her finery might be taken off and that we should sec how she looked without it. In that case her beauty should receive such praise as it deserves. I would never praise her unless simply dressed. If she only regards fine clothes as an aid to personal beauty, and as a tacit confession that she needs their aid, she will not be proud of her finery, she will be humbled by it; and if she hears some one say, "How pretty she is," when she is smarter than usual, she will blush for shame.
[1308:] Moreover, though there are figures that require adornment there are none that require expensive clothes. Extravagance in dress is the folly of the class rather than the individual, it is merely conventional. Genuine coquetry is sometimes carefully thought out, but never sumptuous, and Juno dressed herself more magnificently than Venus. "Since you cannot make her beautiful you are making her rich," said Apelles to an unskilful artist who was painting Helen loaded with jewellery. I have also noticed that the smartest clothes proclaim the plainest women; no folly could be more misguided. If a young girl has good taste and a contempt for fashion, give her a few yards of ribbon, muslin, and gauze, and a handful of flowers, without any diamonds, fringes, or lace,
[Note 6] and she will make herself a dress a hundredfold more becoming than all the smart clothes of La Duchapt.
[1309:] Since what is good is always good and since you should always look your best, women who know themselves well select a good style and keep to it. And since they are not always changing their style they think less about dress than those who can never settle on any one style. A genuine desire to dress becomingly does not require an elaborate preparation. Young girls rarely give much time to dress; needlework and lessons are the business of the day. Yet, except for the rouge, they are generally as carefully dressed as older women and often in better taste. Contrary to the usual opinion, the real cause of the abuse of fashion is not vanity but lack of occupation. The woman who spends six hours at her dressing table is well aware that she is no better dressed than the woman who spends half an hour, but she has gotten rid of many tedious hours and it is better to amuse oneself with one's clothes than to be sick of everything. Without the dressing table how would she spend the time between noon and 9 p.m.? With a crowd of women about her, she can at least cause them annoyance, which is amusement of a kind; better still she avoids a tête-á-tête with her husband who is only seen at that time. Also there are the tradespeople, the dealers in bric-ábrac, the fine gentlemen, the minor poets with their songs, their verses, and their pamphlets -- how could you get them together without the ritual of the dressing table? Its only real advantage is the chance of exposing oneself a bit more than when one is fully dressed. But perhaps this advantage is less than it seems and a woman gains less than she thinks. Do not be afraid to educate your women as women. Teach them a woman's business, that they be modest, that they may know how to manage their house and look after their family. At that point dressing table rituals will soon disappear, and women will be more tastefully dressed.
[1310:] Growing girls perceive at once that all this outside adornment is not enough unless they have charms of their own. They cannot make themselves beautiful, they are too young for coquetry, but they are not too young to acquire graceful gestures, a pleasing voice, a self-possessed manner, a light step, a graceful bearing, to choose whatever advantages are within their reach. The voice extends its range, it grows stronger and more resonant; the arms become plumper, the bearing more assured, and they perceive that it is easy to attract attention however dressed. Needlework and industry suffice no longer; fresh gifts are developing and their usefulness is already recognised.
[1311:] I know that stern teachers want us to refuse to teach little girls to sing or dance, or to acquire any of the pleasing arts. This strikes me as absurd. Who should learn these arts-our boys? Are these to be the favourite accomplishments of men or women? Of neither, say they; profane songs are simply so many crimes, dancing is an invention of the Evil One; tasks and her prayers are all the amusement a young girl should have. What strange amusements for a child of ten! I fear that these little saints who have been forced to spend their childhood in prayers to God will pass their youth in another fashion; when they are married they will try to make up for lost time. I think we must consider age as well as sex. A young girl should not live like her grandmother. She should be lively, merry, and eager; she should sing and dance to her heart's content, and enjoy all the innocent pleasures of youth. The time will come, all too soon, when she must settle down and adopt a more serious tone.
[1312:] But is this change in itself really necessary? Is it not merely another result of our own prejudices? By making good women the slaves of dismal duties, we have deprived marriage of its charm for men. Can we wonder that the gloomy silence they find at home drives them elsewhere, or inspires little desire to enter a state which offers so few attractions? Christianity, by exaggerating every duty, has made our duties impracticable and useless. By forbidding singing, dancing, and amusements of every kind, it makes women sulky, fault-finding, and intolerable at home. There is no other religion that imposes such strict duties upon married life, and none in which such a sacred engagement is so often profaned. We've done so much to prevent wives from being lovable that we've made their husbands indifferent. This should not be, I grant you, but it will be, since Christians are only men. I would like to see English maidens cultivate the talents that will delight their husbands as zealously as the Albanese cultivate the accomplishments of an Eastern harem. Husbands, you say, care little for such accomplishments. So I should suppose when they are used not for the husband but to attract young rakes who dishonour the home. But imagine a lovable and wise wife, adorned with such accomplishments and devoting them to her husband's amusement; will she not add to his happiness? When he leaves his office worn out with the day's work, will she not prevent him seeking recreation elsewhere? Have we not all seen happy families gathered together, each contributing to the common fun? Who would not admit that confidence and familiarity combined in this way, the innocence and the sweetness of the pleasures thus enjoyed, are more than enough to make up for the noisier pleasures of public entertainments?
[1313:] Pleasant talents have been reduced too much to a formal art. They have been too generalized, they have all been made into maxims and precepts; and what should be for young women only fun and silly games has been made into something extremely boring. Nothing can be more absurd than an elderly singing or dancing master frowning upon young people whose main desire is to laugh, and adopting a more pedantic and magisterial manner in teaching his frivolous art than if he were teaching the catechism. Take the case of singing; does this art really depend on reading music? Cannot the voice be made true and flexible, can we not learn to sing with taste and even to play an accompaniment without knowing a note? Does the same kind of singing suit all voices alike? Is the same method adapted to every mind? You will never persuade me that the same attitudes, the same steps, the same movements, the same gestures, the same dances will suit a lively little brunette and a tall fair maiden with languishing eyes. So when I find a master giving the same lessons to all his pupils I say, "He has his own routine, but he knows nothing of his art!"
[1314:] I am asked whether girls should have male or female teachers. I cannot say. I wish they could dispense with both. I wish they could learn of their own accord what they are already so willing to learn. I wish there were fewer of these dressed-up old ballet masters promenading our streets. I fear our young people will get more harm from intercourse with such people than profit from their instruction, and that their jargon, their tone, their airs and graces, will instill a precocious taste for the frivolities which the teacher thinks so important, and to which the scholars are only too likely to devote themselves.
[1315:] Where pleasure is the only end in view, any one may serve as teacher-father, mother, brother, sister, friend, governess, the girl's mirror, and above all her own taste. Do not offer to teach, let her ask. Do not make a task of what should be a reward, and in these studies above all remember that the wish to succeed is the first step. If formal instruction is required I leave it to you to choose between a master and a mistress. How can I tell whether a dancing master should take a young pupil by her soft white hand, make her lift her skirt and raise her eyes, open her arms and advance her throbbing bosom? But this I do know, nothing on earth would induce me to be that master.
[1316:] Taste is formed partly by industry and partly by talent. With taste the mind opens uncounsciously to ideas of beauty in all its forms and to the moral notions that relate to beauty. Perhaps this is one reason why ideas of decency and goodness are acquired earlier by girls than by boys, for to suppose that this early feeling is due to the teaching of the governesses would show little knowledge of their style of teaching and of the natural development of the human mind. The art of speaking stands first among the pleasing arts; it alone can add fresh charms to those which have been blunted by habit. It is the mind which not only gives life to the body, but renews, so to speak, its youth. The flow of feelings and ideas give life and variety to the countenance, and the conversation to which it gives rise arouses and sustains attention, and fixes it continuously on one object. I suppose this is why little girls so soon learn to chatter prettily, and why men enjoy listening to them even before the child can understand them; they are watching for the first gleam of intelligence and sentiment.
[1317:] Women have ready tongues; they talk earlier, more easily, and more pleasantly than men. They are also said to talk more. This may be true, but I am prepared to reckon it to their credit; eyes and mouth are equally busy and for the same cause. A man says what he knows, a woman says what will please; the one needs knowledge, the other taste. Utility should be the man's object; the woman speaks to give pleasure. There should be nothing in common but truth.
[1318:] You should not restrain a girl's chatter like a boy's by the harsh question, "What is the use of that?" but by another question at least as difficult to answer, "What effect will that have?" At this early age when they know neither good nor evil, and are incapable of judging others, they should make this their rule and never say anything which is unpleasant to those about them. This rule is all the more difficult to apply because it must always be subordinated to our first rule, " Never tell a lie."
[1319:] I can see many other difficulties, but they belong to a later stage. For the present it is enough for your little girls to speak the truth without grossness, and since they are naturally averse to what is gross, education easily teaches them to avoid it. In social intercourse I observe that a man's politeness is usually more official and a woman's more caressing. This distinction is natural, not artificial. A man seeks to serve, a woman seeks to please. Hence a woman's politeness is less insincere than ours, whatever we may think of her character; for she is only acting upon a fundamental instinct. But when a man professes to put my interests before his own, I detect the falsehood, however disguised. Hence it is easy for women to be polite, and easy to teach little girls politeness. The first lessons come by nature; art only supplements them and determines the conventional form which politeness shall take. The courtesy of woman to woman is another matter. Their manner is so constrained, their attentions so chilly, they find each other so wearisome, that they take little pains to conceal the fact, and seem sincere even in their falsehood, since they take so little pains to conceal it. Still young girls do sometimes become sincerely attached to one another. At their age good spirits take the place of a good disposition, and they are so pleased with themselves that they are pleased with every one else. Moreover, it is certain that they kiss each other more affectionately and caress each other more gracefully in the presence of men, for they are proud to be able to arouse their envy without danger to themselves by the sight of favours which they know will arouse that envy.
[1320:] If young boys must not be allowed to ask indiscrete questions, much more must they be forbidden to little girls. If their curiosity is satisfied or unskilfully evaded it is a much more serious matter, for they are so keen to guess the mysteries concealed from them and so skilful to discover them. But while I would not permit them to ask questions, I would have them questioned frequently, and pains should be taken to make them talk. Let them be provoked to make them speak freely, to make them answer readily, to loosen mind and tongue while it can be done without danger. Such conversation always leads to gaity, yet skilfully controlled and directed, would form a delightful amusement at this age and might instill into these youthful hearts the first and perhaps the most helpful lessons in morals which they will ever receive, by teaching them in the guise of pleasure and fun what qualities are esteemed by men and what is the true glory and happiness of a good woman.
[1321:] If male children are incapable of forming any true idea of religion, much more is it beyond the grasp of girls. It for this reason that I would speak of it all the sooner to little girls, for if we wait till they are ready for a methodical discussion of these deep subjects we should be in danger of never speaking of religion at all. A woman's reason is practical, and therefore she soon arrives at a given conclusion, but she fails to discover it for herself. The social relation of the sexes is a wonderful thing. From this society results a moral person of which woman is the eye and man the hand, but the two are so dependent on one another that it is from the man that the woman learns what must be seen and from the woman that the man learns what must be done. If women could discover principles and if men had as good minds for detail, they would be mutually independent, they would live in perpetual strife, and their society could no longer subsist. But in their mutual harmony each contributes to a common purpose, neither knows which one gives most of himself; each follows the initiative of the other, each one obeys and both are masters.
[1322:] Just as a woman's conduct is controlled by public opinion, so her is religion ruled by authority. The daughter should follow her mother's religion, the wife her husband's. Even when that religion is false, the docility which leads mother and daughter to submit to nature's laws would blot out the sin of error in the sight of God. Unable to judge for themselves they should accept the judgment of father and husband as that of the church.
[1323:] Not being able to draw from themselves the guidelines for their faith, neither can women assign limits to that faith by evidence or reason. Instead they let themselves be driven by a million external influences and are always either above or below the truth. Extreme in everything, they are either altogether reckless or altogether pious; you never find them able to combine virtue and piety. Their natural exaggeration is not wholly to blame; the ill-regulated control exercised over them by men is partly responsible. Loose morals bring religion into contempt; the terrors of remorse make it a tyrant. This is why women have always too much or too little religion.
[1324:] As a woman's religion is controlled by authority it is more important to show her plainly what to believe than to explain the reasons for belief. For faith attached to ideas half-understood is the main source of fanaticism, and faith demanded on behalf of what is absurd leads to madness or unbelief. Whether our catechisms tend to produce impiety rather than fanaticism I cannot say, but I do know that they lead to one or other.
[1325:] In the first place, when you teach religion to little girls never make it gloomy or tiresome, never make it a task or a duty, and therefore never give them anything to learn by heart, not even their prayers. Be content to say your own prayers regularly in their presence, but do not compel them to join you. Let their prayers be short, as Christ himself has taught us. Let them always be said with becoming reverence and respect. Remember that if we ask the Supreme Being to attend to our words, we should at least give put ourselves into what we mean to say.
[1326:] It does not much matter that a girl should learn her religion young, but it does matter that she should learn it thoroughly, and still more that she should learn to love it. If you make religion a burden to her, if you always speak of God's anger, if in the name of religion you impose all sorts of disagreeable duties on her, duties that she never sees you perform, what can she suppose but that to learn one's catechism and to say one's prayers is only the duty of a little girl, and she will long to be grown-up to escape, like you, from these duties. Example! Example! Without it you will never succeed in teaching children anything.
[1327:] When you explain the Articles of Faith let it be by direct teaching, not by question and answer. Children should only answer what they think, not what has been drilled into them. All the answers in the catechism are the wrong way about; it is the student who instructs the teacher. In the child's mouth they are a downright lie, since they explain what he does not understand and affirm what he cannot believe. Find me, if you can, an intelligent man who could honestly say his catechism.
[1328:] The first question I find in our catechism is as follows: "Who created you and brought you into the world?" To which the girl, who thinks it was her mother, replies without hesitation, "It was God." All she knows is that she is asked a question which she only half understands and she gives an answer she does not understand at all.
[1329:] I wish some one who really understands the development of children's minds would write a catechism for them. It might be the most useful book ever written, and, in my opinion, it would do its author no little honor. This at least is certain-if it were a good book it would be very unlike our catechisms.
[1330:] Such a catechism will not be satisfactory unless the child can answer the questions of her own accord without having to learn the answers. Indeed the child will often ask the questions herself. An example is required to make my meaning plain and I feel how ill equipped I am to furnish such an example. I will try to give some sort of outline of my meaning.
[1331:] To get to the first question in our catechism I suppose we must begin somewhat after the following fashion.
[1332:] Nurse:Do you remember when your mother was a little girl?Child:No, nurse.Nurse:Why not, when you have such a good memory?Child:I was not alive.Nurse:Then you were not always alive?Child:No.Nurse:Will you live for ever?Child:Yes.Nurse:Are you young or old?Child:I am young.Nurse:Is your grandmamma old or young?Child:She is old.Nurse:Was she ever young?Child:Yes.Nurse:Why is she not young now?Child:She has grown old.Nurse:Will you grow old too?Child:I don t know.Nurse:Where are your last year's frocks?Child:They have had the stitching taken out of them.Nurse:Why?Child:Because they were too small for me.Nurse:Why were they too small?Child:I have grown bigger.Nurse:Will you grow any more?Child:Oh, yes.Nurse:An what becomes of big girls?Child:They grow into women.Nurse:And what becomes of women?Child:They are mothers.Nurse:And what becomes of mothers?Child:They grow old.Nurse:Will you grow old?Child:When I am a mother.Nurse:And what becomes of old people?Child:I don't know.
[Note 7]Nurse:What became of your grandfather?Child:He died.Nurse:Why did he die?
[Note 8]Child:Because he was so old.Nurse:What becomes of old people?Child:They die.Nurse:And when you are old-?Child:Oh nurse! I don't want to die!Nurse:My dear, no one wants to die, and everybody dies.Child:Why, will mamma die too?Nurse:Yes, like everybody else. Women grow old as well as men, and old age ends in death.Child:What must I do to grow old very, very slowly?Nurse:Be good while you are little.Child:I will always be good, nurse.Nurse:So much the better. But do you suppose you will lire for ever?Child:When I am very, very old- Nurse:Well?Child:When we are so very old you say we must die?Nurse:You must die some day.Child:Oh dear! I suppose I must.Nurse:Who lived before you?Child:My father and mother.Nurse:And before them?Child:Their father and mother.Nurse:Who will live after you?Child:My children.Nurse:Who will live after them?Child:Their children.
[1333:] In this way, by concrete examples, you will find a beginning and end for the human race like everything else-that is to say, a father and mother who never had a father and mother, and children who will never have children of their own.
[1334:] It is only after a long course of similar questions that we are ready for the first question in the catechism. Only then can we put the question and the child may be able to understand it. But what a gap there is between the first and the second question which is concerned with the definitions of the divine nature. When will this chasm be bridged? "God is a spirit." "And what is a spirit?" Shall I start the child upon this difficult question of metaphysics which grown men find so hard to understand? These are no questions for a little girl to answer. If she asks them, it is as much or more than we can expect. In that case I should tell her quite simply, "You ask me what God is. It is not easy to say; we can neither hear nor see nor handle God; we can only know Him by His works. To learn what He is, you must wait till you know what He has done."
[1335:] If our dogmas are all equally true, they are not equally important. It makes little difference to the glory of God that we should perceive it everywhere, but it does make a difference to human society, and to every member of that society, that a man should know and do the duties which are laid upon him by the law of God, his duty to his neighbour and to himself. This is what we should always be teaching one another, and it is this which fathers and mothers are specially bound to teach their little ones. Whether a virgin became the mother of her Creator, whether she gave birth to God, or merely to a man into whom God has entered, whether the Father and the Son are of the same substance or of similar substance only, whether the Spirit proceeded from one or both of these who are but one, or from both together -- however important these questions may seem, I cannot see that it is any more necessary for the human race to come to a decision with regard to them than to know what day to keep Easter, or whether we should tell our beads, fast, and refuse to eat meat, speak Latin or French in church, adorn the walls with statues, hear or say mass, and have no wife of our own. Let each think as he pleases. I cannot see that it matters to any one but himself. For my own part it is no concern of mine. But what does concern my fellow-creatures and myself alike is to know that there is indeed a judge of human fate whose children we all are, who bids us all be just, to love one another, to be kindly and merciful, to keep our word with all men, even with our own enemies and his. We must know that the apparent happiness of this world is nothing; that there is another life to come, in which this Supreme Being will be the rewarder of the just and the judge of the unjust. Children need to be taught these doctrines and others like them and all citizens require to be persuaded of their truth. Whoever sets his face against these doctrines is indeed guilty; he is the disturber of the peace, the enemy of society. Whoever goes beyond these doctrines and seeks to make us the slaves of his private opinions reaches the same goal by another way. To establish his own kind of order he disturbs the peace; in his rash pride he makes himself the interpreter of the Divine; and in his name he demands the homage and the reverence of mankind. So far as may be, he sets himself in God's place. He should receive the punishment of sacrilege if he is not punished for his intolerance.
[1336:] Disregard, therefore, all those mysterious doctrines which are words without ideas for us, all those strange teachings, the study of which is too often offered as a substitute for virtue, a study which more often makes men mad rather than good. Keep your children ever within the little circle of dogmas which are related to morality. Convince them that the only useful learning is that which teaches us to act rightly. Do not make your daughters into theologians and casuists; only teach them such things of heaven as conduce to human goodness. Train them to feel that they are always in the presence of God, who sees their thoughts and deeds, their virtue and their pleasures. Teach them to do good without ostentation and because they love it, to suffer evil without a murmur because God will reward them; in a word to be all their life long what they will be glad to have been when they appear in his presence. This is true religion; this alone is incapable of abuse, impiety, or fanaticism. Let those who will teach a religion more sublime, but this is the only religion I know.
[1337:] Moreover, it is as well to observe that until the age when reason becomes enlightened, when growing emotion gives a voice to conscience, what is wrong for young people is what those around them have decided to be wrong. What they are told to do is good; what they are forbidden to do is bad; that is all they ought to know. This shows how important it is for girls, even more than for boys, that the right people should be chosen to be with them and to have authority over them. Finally the time comes when they begin to judge things for themselves; then is the time to change your method of education.
[1338:] Perhaps I have said too much already. To what shall we reduce the education of our women if we give them no law but that of conventional prejudice? Let us not degrade so far the sex which rules over us and which does us honour when we have not debased it. There exists for the whole human race a rule anterior to that of public opinion. The inflexible direction of this rule is what all the others should relate to. It is the judge even of prejudice, and only in so far as the esteem of men is in accordance with this rule has it any authority for us.
[1339:] This rule is our interior sentiment. I will not repeat what has been said already; it is enough to point out that if these two laws clash, the education of women will always be imperfect. Sentiment without respect for public opinion will not give them that delicacy of soul which lends to right conduct the charm of social approval, while respect for public opinion without sentiment will only make false and wicked women who put appearances in the place of virtue.
[1340:] It is, therefore, important to cultivate a faculty which serves as judge between the two guides, which does not permit conscience to go astray and corrects the errors of prejudice. That faculty is reason. But what a crowd of questions arise at this word! Are women capable of solid reasoning? Should they cultivate it? Will they cultivate it successfully? Is this culture useful in relation to the functions laid upon them? Is it compatible with the simplicity that suits them?
[1341:] The different ways of envisaging and answering these questions means that given these two extremes some would limit women to sewing and spinning in the household with their maids and would make them nothing more than the chief servant of their master; others, not content to secure their rights, would lead them to usurp ours. For to make woman our superior in all the qualities proper to her sex, and to make her our equal in all the rest, what is this but to transfer to the woman the superiority which nature has given to the husband?
[1342:] The reason which teaches a man his duties is not very complex; the reason which teaches a woman hers is even simpler. The obedience and fidelity which she owes to her husband, the tenderness and care due to her children, are such natural and self-evident consequences of her condition that she cannot honestly refuse her consent to the inner voice which is her guide, nor disregard her duty in her natural inclination.
[1343:] I would not altogether blame those who would restrict a woman to the labours of her sex and would leave her in profound ignorance of everything else. But that would require either a very simple, very healthy public morality or a very isolated life style. In large cities, among immoral men, such a woman would be too easily seduced. Her virtue would too often be at the mercy of circumstances. In this philosophic century, virtue must be able to be put to the test. She must know in advance what people might say to her and what she should think of it.
[1344:] Moreover, having to submit to men's judgment she should merit their esteem. Above all she should obtain the esteem of her spouse. She should not only make him love her person, she should make him approve her conduct. She should justify his choice before the world, and do honour to her husband through the honour given to the wife. But how can she set about this task if she is ignorant of our institutions, our customs, our notions of what is proper, if she knows nothing of the source of man's judgment, nor the passions by which it is swayed? Since she depends both on her own conscience and on public opinion, she must learn to know and reconcile these two laws, and to put her own conscience first only when the two are opposed to each other. She becomes the judge of her own judges, she decides when she should submit to them and when she should refuse her obedience. Before she accepts or rejects their prejudices she weighs them; she learns to trace them to their source, to foresee what they will be, and to turn them in her own favour. She is careful never to give cause for blame if duty allows her to avoid it. This cannot be properly done without cultivating her mind and herreason.
[1345:] I always come back to my main principle and it supplies the solution of all my difficulties. I study what is, I seek its cause, and I discover in the end that what is, is good. I go to open houses where the master and mistress do the honours together. They are equally well educated, equally polite, equally well equipped with wit and good taste; both of them are inspired with the same desire to give their guests a good reception and to send every one away satisfied. The husband omits no pains to be attentive to every one; he comes and goes and sees to every one and takes all sorts of trouble; he is attention itself. The wife remains in her place; a little circle gathers round her and apparently conceals the rest of the company from her; yet she sees everything that goes on. No one goes without a word with her; she has omitted nothing which might interest anybody. She has said nothing unpleasant to any one, and without any fuss the least is no more overlooked than the greatest. Dinner is announced, they take their places. The man who knows the assembled guests will place them according to his knowledge; the wife, without previous acquaintance, never makes a mistake. Their looks and bearing have already shown her what is wanted and every one will find himself where he wishes to be. I do not assert that the servants forget no one. The master of the house may have omitted no one, but the mistress perceives what each likes and sees that he gets it. While she is talking to her neighbour she has one eye on the other end of the table; she sees who is not eating because he is not hungry and who is afraid to help himself because he is clumsy and timid. When the guests leave the table every one thinks she has thought only of him, everybody thinks she has had no time to eat anything, but she has really eaten more than anybody.
[1346:] When the guests are gone, husband and wife talk over the events of the evening. He relates what was said to him, what was said and done by those with whom he conversed. If the lady is not always quite exact in this respect, nevertheless she perceived what was whispered at the other end of the room. She knows what so-and-so thought, and what was the meaning of this speech or that gesture. There is scarcely a change of expression for which she has not an explanation in readiness, and she is almost always right.
[1347:] The same turn of mind which makes a woman of the world such an excellent hostess enables a flirt to excel in the art of amusing a number of suitors. Coquetry, cleverly carried out, demands an even finer discernment than courtesy. Provided a polite lady is civil to everybody, she has done fairly well in any case. But the flirt would soon lose her hold by such clumsy uniformity. If she tries to be pleasant to all her lovers alike, she will disgust them all. In society the manners adopted towards everybody are good enough for each; provided all are alike well received, no question is asked as to private likes or dislikes. But in love, a favor shared with others is an insult. A man of feeling would rather be singled out for ill-treatment than be caressed with the crowd, and the worst that can happen to him is to be treated like every one else. So a woman who wants to keep several lovers must persuade every one of them that she prefers him, and she must contrive to do this in the sight of all the rest, each of whom is equally convinced that he is her favorite.
[1348:] If you want to see a man in a quandary, place him between two women with each of whom he has a secret understanding, and see what a fool he looks. But put a woman in similar circumstances between two men, and the results will be even more remarkable. You will be astonished at the skill with which she cheats them both and makes them laugh at each other. Now if that woman were to show the same confidence in both, if she were to be equally familiar with both, how could they be deceived for a moment? If she treated them alike, would she not show that they both had the same claims upon her? Oh, she is far too clever for that! So far from treating them just alike, she makes a marked difference between them, and she does it so skilfully that the man she flatters thinks it is affection, and the man she ill uses think it is spite. So that each of them believes she is thinking of him, when she is thinking of no one but herself.
[1349:] A general desire to please suggests similar measures. People would be disgusted with a woman's whims if they were not skilfully managed, and when they are artfully distributed her slaves are more than ever enchained."Usa ogn'arte la donna, onde sia coltoNella sua rete alcun novello amante;Nè con tutti, nè sempre un stesso voltoSerba; ma cangia a tempo attn e sembiante."TASSO, Jerus. Del., c. iv., v. 87.
[1350:] What is the secret of this art if it is it not the result of a delicate and continuous observation which shows her what is taking place in a man's heart, so that she is able to encourage or to check every hidden impulse? Can this art be acquired? No; it is born with women; it is common to them all, and men never show it to the same degree. It is one of the distinctive characters of the sex. Self-possession, penetration, delicate observation, this is a woman's science. The skill to make use of it is her chief accomplishment.
[1351:] This is what is, and we have seen why it should be. It is said that women are false. They become false. They are really endowed with skill not duplicity; in the genuine inclinations of their sex they are not false even when they tell a lie. Why do you consult their words when it is not their mouths that speak? Consult their eyes, their colour, their breathing, their timid manner, their slight resistance; that is the language nature gave them for your answer. The lips always say "No," and rightly so; but the tone is not always the same, and that cannot lie. Has not a woman the same needs as a man, but without the same right to make them known? Her fate would be too cruel if at the time of her legitimate desires she did not have a language equivalent to the one she dare not have. Must her modesty make her unhappy? Does she not require a means of indicating her inclinations without open expression? What skill is needed to hold back from her lover what she is burning to give him! Is it not of vital importance that she should learn to touch his heart without showing that she cares for him? It is a pretty story that tale of Galatea with her apple and her clumsy flight. What more is needed? Will she tell the shepherd who pursues her among the willows that she is only running from him so that he will follow her? If she did, it would be a lie; for she would no longer attract him. The more reserve a woman has, the more art she needs, even with her husband. Yes, I maintain that by keeping coquetry within its limits a woman becomes modest and true, and out of it springs a law of honesty.
[1352:] One of my opponents has very truly asserted that virtue is a whole; you cannot disintegrate it and choose this and reject the other. If you love virtue, you love it in its entirety; and you close your heart when you can, and you always close your lips, to the feelings which you ought not to allow. Moral truth is not only what is, but what is good; what is bad ought not to be, and ought not to be confessed, especially when that confession produces results which might have been avoided. If I were tempted to steal, and in confessing it I tempted another to become my accomplice, the very confession of my temptation would amount to a yielding to that temptation. Why do you say that modesty makes women false? Are those who lose their modesty more sincere than the rest? Far from it; they are a thousandfold more deceitful. This degree of depravity is due to many vices, none of which is rejected, vices which owe their power to intrigue and falsehood.
[Note 9] On the other hand, those who still feel shame, who take no pride in their faults, who are able to conceal their desires even from those who inspire them, those who confess their passion most reluctantly, these are the truest and most sincere, these are they on whose fidelity you may generally rely.
[1353:] The only example I know which might be quoted as a recognised exception to these remarks is MIle. de L' Enclos; and she was considered a prodigy. In her scorn for the virtues of women, she practised, so they say, the virtues of a man. She is praised for her frankness and uprightness; she was a trustworthy acquaintance and a faithful friend. To complete the picture of her glory it is said that she became a man. That may be, but in spite of her high reputation I should no more desire that man as my friend than as my mistress.
[1354:] This is not so irrelevant as it seems. I am aware of the tendencies of our modern philosophy which make a jest of female modesty and its so-called insincerity; I also perceive that the most certain result of this philosophy will be to deprive the women of this century of such shreds of honor as they still possess.
[1355:] On these grounds I think we may decide in general terms what sort of education is suited to the female mind and the objects to which we should turn its attention in early youth.
[1356:] As I have already said, the duties of their sex are more easily recognised than performed. They must learn in the first place to love those duties by considering the advantages to be derived from them -- that is the only way to make duty easy. Every age and condition has its own duties. We are quick to see our duty if we love it. Honor your position as a woman, and in whatever station of life to which it shall please heaven to call you, you will be well off. The essential thing is to be what nature has made you; women are only too ready to be what men would have them.
[1357:] The search for abstract and speculative truths, for principles and axioms in science, for all that tends to wide generalisation, is beyond a woman's grasp; their studies should be thoroughly practical. It is their business to apply the principles discovered by men, it is their place to make the observations which lead men to discover those principles. A woman's thoughts, beyond the range of her immediate duties, should be directed to the study of men, or the acquirement of that agreeable learning whose sole end is the formation of taste. For the works of genius are beyond her reach, and she has neither the accuracy nor the attention for success in the exact sciences. As for the physical sciences, to decide the relations between living creatures and the laws of nature is the task of that sex which is more active and enterprising, which sees more things, that sex which is possessed of greater strength and is more accustomed to the exercise of that strength. Woman, weak as she is and limited in her range of observation, perceives and judges the forces at her disposal to supplement her weakness, and those forces are the passions of man. Her own mechanism is more powerful than ours; she has many levers which may set the human heart in motion. She must find a way to make us desire what she cannot achieve unaided and what she considers necessary or pleasing. Therefore she must have a thorough knowledge of man's mind -- not an abstract knowledge of the mind of man in general, but the mind of those men who are about her, the mind of those men who have authority over her, either by law or custom. She must learn to intuit their feelings from speech and action, look and gesture. By her own speech and action, look and gesture, she must be able to inspire them with the feelings she desires, without seeming to have any such purpose. The men will have a better philosophy of the human heart, but she will read more accurately in the heart of men. Woman should discover, so to speak, an experimental morality; man should reduce it to a system. Woman has more wit, man more genius; woman observes, man reasons. Together they provide the clearest light and the profoundest knowledge which is possible to the unaided human mind -- in a word, the surest knowledge of self and of others of which the human race is capable. In this way art may constantly tend to the perfection of the instrument which nature has given us.
[1358:] The world is woman's book. If she reads it wrong, it is either her own fault or she is blinded by passion. Yet the genuine mother of a family is no woman of the world; she is almost as much of a recluse as the nun in her convent. Those who have marriageable daughters should do what is or ought to be done for those who are entering the cloisters: they should show them the pleasures they forsake before they are allowed to renounce them, lest the deceitful picture of unknown pleasures should creep in to disturb the happiness of their retreat. In France it is the girls who live in convents and the wives who flaunt in society. Among the ancients it was quite otherwise; girls enjoyed, as I have said already, many games and public festivals; the married women lived in retirement. This was a more reasonable custom and more conducive to morality. Girls may be allowed a certain amount of coquetry; to amuse themselves is their main business. A wife has other responsibilities at home, and she is no longer on the look-out for a husband. But women would not appreciate such reforms, and unluckily it is they who set the fashion. Mothers, let your daughters be your companions. Give them good sense and an honest heart, and then conceal from them nothing that a pure eye may observe. Balls, assemblies, sports, the theatre itself -- everything which viewed badly will charm an imprudent youth -- may be offered without risk to a healthy mind. The more they know of these noisy pleasures, the sooner they will be disgusted by them.
[1359:] I can imagine the outcry with which will be raised against me. What girl will resist such an example? Their heads are turned by the first glimpse of the world; not one of them is ready to give it up. That may be; but before you showed them this deceitful prospect, did you prepare them to see it without emotion? Did you tell them plainly what they would be presented with? Did you show it in its true light? Did you arm them against the illusions of vanity? Did you inspire their young hearts with a taste for the true pleasures which are not to be found with in this crowd? What precautions, what steps, did you take to preserve them from the false taste which leads them astray? Not only have you done nothing to preserve their minds from the tyranny of prejudice, you have fostered that prejudice; you have taught them to desire every foolish amusement they can get. Your own example is their teacher. Young people on their entrance into society have no guide but their mother, who is often just as silly as they are themselves, and quite unable to show them things except as she sees them herself. Her example is stronger than reason; it justifies them in their own eyes, and the mother's authority is an unanswerable excuse for the daughter. If I ask a mother to bring her daughter into society, I assume that she will show it in its true light.
[1360:] The evil begins still earlier. The convents are regular schools of coquetry, not that honest coquetry which I have described above, but a coquetry that is the source of every kind of misconduct, a coquetry that turns out girls who are the most ridiculous little madams. When they leave the convent to take their place in smart society, young women find themselves quite at home. They have been educated for such a life; is it strange that they like it? I am afraid what I am going to say may be based on prejudice rather than observation, but so far as I can see, one finds more family affection, more good wives and loving mothers in Protestant than in Catholic countries. If that is so, we cannot fail to suspect that the difference is partly due to the convent schools.
[1361:] The charms of a peaceful family life must be known to be enjoyed; their delights should be tasted in childhood. It is only in our father's home that we learn to love our own, and a woman whose mother did not educate her herself will not be willing to educate her own children. Unfortunately, there is no such thing as home education in our cities. Society is so general and so mixed there is no place left to retreat to, and even in the home we live in public. We live in company till we have no family, and we scarcely know our own relations. We see them as strangers; and the simplicity of home life disappears together with the sweet familiarity which was its charm. In this way do we draw with our mother's milk a taste for the pleasures of the age and the maxims by which it is controlled.
[1362:] Girls are made to assume an air of coolness so that men may be deceived into marrying them by their appearances. But study these young people for a moment; under a pretence of coyness they barely conceal the passion which devours them, and already you may read in their eager eyes their desire to imitate their mothers. It is not a husband they want, but the licence of a married woman. What need of a husband when there are so many other resources? But a husband there must be to act as a screen.
[Note 10] There is modesty on the brow but libertinage in the heart; this sham modesty is one of its outward signs. They affect it that they may be rid of it once for all. Women of Paris and London, forgive me! There may be miracles everywhere, but I am not aware of them; and if there is even one among you who is really pure in heart, I know nothing of our institutions.
[1363:] All these different methods of education lead in similar ways to a taste for the pleasures of the great world and to the passions which this taste so soon kindles. In our great towns depravity begins at birth; in the smaller towns it begins with reason. Young women brought up in the country are soon taught to despise the happy simplicity of their lives, and hurry to Paris to share the corruption of ours. Vices, cloaked under the fine name of accomplishments, are the sole object of their journey. Ashamed to find themselves so much behind the noble licence of the Parisian ladies, they cannot wait to become worthy of the name of Parisian. Which is responsible for the evil -- the place where it begins, or the place where it is accomplished?
[1364:] I would not have a sensible mother bring her girl to Paris to show her these sights so harmful to others; but I assert that if she did so, either the girl has been badly brought up, or such sights have little danger for her. With good taste, good sense, and a love of what is right, these things are less attractive than to those who abandon themselves to their charm. In Paris you may see giddy young people hastening to adopt the tone and fashions of the town for some six months, so that they may spend the rest of their life in disgrace; but who pays any attention to those who, disgusted with the rout, return to their distant home and are contented with their lot when they have compared it with that which others desire. How many young wives have I seen whose good-natured husbands have taken them to Paris where they might live if they pleased; but they have shrunk from it and returned home more willingly than they went, saying tenderly, "Ah, let us go back to our cottage, life is happier there than in these palaces." We do not know how many there are who have not bowed down to idols, who scorn his senseless worship. Fools make all the noise; good women pass unnoticed.
[1365:] If so many women preserve a judgment which is proof against temptation, in spite of universal prejudice, in spite of the bad education of girls, what would their judgment have been had it been strengthened by suitable instruction, or rather left unaffected by evil teaching? For to preserve or restore the natural feelings is our main business. You can do this without preaching endless sermons to your daughters, without burdening them with your harsh morality. With both sexes, moralizing means the death of any good education. Dreary lessons only create an aversion both for what is said and for those who say it. In talking to a young girl you need not make her afraid of her duties, nor need you increase the yoke imposed upon her by nature. When you explain her duties speak plainly and pleasantly; do not let her suppose that the performance of these duties is a dismal thing -- no angry tones, no haughtiness. Every thought which we desire to arouse should find its expression in our pupils. Their catechism of conduct should be as brief and plain as their catechism of religion, but it need not be so serious. Show them that these same duties are the source of their pleasures and the basis of their rights. Is it so hard to win love by love, happiness by an amiable disposition, obedience by worth, and honour by self-respect? How fair are these woman's rights, how worthy of reverence, how dear to the heart of man when a woman is able to show their worth! These rights are no privilege of years; a woman's empire begins with her virtues. Her charms are only in the bud, yet she reigns already by the gentleness of her character and the dignity of her modesty. Is there any man so hard-hearted and uncivilised that he does not soften his pride and attend to his manners with a sweet and virtuous girl of sixteen, who listens but says little, whose bearing is modest, conversation honest, whose beauty does not lead her to forget her sex and her youth, whose very timidity arouses interest while she wins for herself the respect which she shows to others?
[1366:] These external signs are not devoid of meaning. They do not rest entirely upon the charms of sense; they arise from that conviction that we all feel that women are the natural judges of a man's worth. Who would be scorned by women? Not even he who has ceased to desire their love. And do you suppose that I, who tell them such harsh truths, am indifferent to their verdict? Reader, I care more for their approval than for yours; you are often more effeminate than they. While I scorn their morals, I will revere their justice. I care not if they hate me so long as I can compel their esteem.
[1367:] What great things might be accomplished by their influence if only we could bring it to bear! Too bad for the century whose women lose their ascendancy, and fail to make men respect their judgment! This is the last stage of degradation. Every virtuous nation has shown respect to women. Consider Sparta, Germany, and Rome -- Rome the throne of glory and virtue, if ever they were enthroned on earth. The Roman women awarded honour to the deeds of great generals, they mourned in public for the fathers of the country, their awards and their tears were equally held sacred as the most solemn utterance of the Republic. Every great revolution began with the women. Through a woman Rome gained her liberty, through a woman the plebeians won the consulate, through a woman the tyranny of the decemvirs was overthrown. It was the women who saved Rome when besieged by Coriolanus. What would you have said at the sight of this procession, you Frenchmen who pride yourselves on your gallantry, would you not have followed it with shouts of laughter? You and I see things with such different eyes, and perhaps we are both right. Such a procession formed of the fairest beauties of France would be an indecent spectacle; but let it consist of Roman ladies, you will all gaze with the eyes of the Volscians and feel with the heart of Coriolanus.
[1368:] I will go further and maintain that virtue is no less favourable to love than to other rights of nature, and that it adds as much to the authority of mistresses as to that of the wives or mothers. There is no real love without enthusiasm, and no enthusiasm without an object of perfection real or supposed, but always present in the imagination. What is there to kindle the hearts of lovers for whom this perfection is nothing, for whom the loved one is merely the means to sensual pleasure? No, it is not thus that the heart kindled, not thus that it abandons itself to those sublime transports which cause the rapture of lovers and the charm of love. Everything is only illusion in love, I admit, but its reality consists in the feelings it awakens in us for the true beauty which it makes us love. That beauty is not to be found in the object of our affections, it is the creation of our illusions. And why should this matter? Do we not still sacrifice all those baser feelings to the imaginary model? Do we not still feed our hearts on the virtues we attribute to the beloved? Do we not still withdraw ourselves from the baseness of the human self? Where is the true lover who would not give his life for his mistress, and where is the gross and sensual passion in a man who is willing to die? We scoff at the knights of old, and yet they knew the meaning of love while we know nothing but debauchery. When the teachings of romance began to seem ridiculous, it was not so much the work of reason as of immorality.
[1369:] Natural relations remain the same throughout the centuries, their good or evil effects are unchanged. Prejudices masquerading as reason can only change their outward seeming. Self-mastery, even at the mercy of fantastic opinions, will not cease to be great and good. And the true motives of honour will not fail to appeal to the heart of every woman with judgement who is able to seek her life's happiness in her own role. To a high-souled woman chastity above all must be a delightful virtue. She sees the whole world at her feet and she triumphs over herself and them; she erects in her own heart a throne to which all come to pay her hommage. The tender or jealous but always respectful sentiments of both sexes, the universal estime and her own self-estime, ceaselessly pay glorious tribute to a few passing struggles. The loss is fleeting, the gain is permanent. What a joy for a noble heart-- the pride of virtue combined with beauty. Let her be a heroine of romance; she will taste delights more exquisite than those of Lais and Cleopatra; and when her beauty is fled, her glory and her joys remain. She alone will be able to enjoy the past.
[1370:] The harder and more important the duties, the stronger and clearer must be the reasons on which they are based. There is a sort of pious talk about the most serious subjects which is drummed into the ears of young people without persuading them. From this talk, quite unsuited to their ideas and the small importance they attach to it in secret, comes the facility to yield to their inclinations, for lack of any reasons for resistance drawn from the facts themselves. No doubt a girl brought up to goodness and piety has strong weapons against temptation; but one whose heart, or rather whose ears, are merely filled with the jargon of piety, will certainly fall a prey to the first skilful seducer who attacks her. A young and beautiful girl will never despise her body; she will never really deplore sins which her beauty leads men to commit; she will never lament earnestly in the sight of God that she is an object of desire; she will never be convinced that the tenderest feeling is an invention of the Evil One. Give her other and more pertinent reasons for her own sake, for these will have no effect. It will be worse to instill, as is often done, ideas which contradict each other, and after having humbled and degraded her person and her charms as the stain of sin, to bid her reverence that same vile body as the temple of Jesus Christ. Ideas too sublime and too humble are equally ineffective and they cannot both be true. A reason adapted to her age and sex is what is needed. Considerations of duty are of no effect unless they are combined with some motive for the performance of our duty."Quæ quia non liceat non facit, illa facit."OVID, A mor. I. iii. eleg. iv.
[1371:] One would not suspect Ovid of such a harsh judgment.
[1372:] Do you wish to inspire young people with a love of good conduct? Then avoid saying, "Be good." Instead, make it their interest to be good; make them feel the value of goodness and they will love it. It is not enough to show this effect in the distant future; show it now, in the relations of the present, in the character of their lovers. Describe a good man, a man of worth; teach them to recognise him when they see him, to love him for their own sake. Convince them that such a man alone can make them happy as friend, wife, or mistress. Let reason lead the way to virtue. Make them feel that the power of their sex and all the advantages derived from it depend not merely on the right conduct, the morality, of women, but also on that of men; that the advantages of virtue have little hold over the vile and base, and that the lover is incapable of serving his mistress unless he can do homage to virtue. You may then be sure that when you describe the manners of our age you will inspire them with a genuine disgust; when you show them men of fashion they will despise them. You will give them a distaste for their maxims, an aversion to their sentiments, and a scorn for their empty gallantry. You will arouse a nobler ambition, to reign over great and strong souls, the ambition of the Spartan women to rule over men. A bold, shameless, intriguing woman, who can only attract her lovers by coquetry and retain them by her favors, wins a servile obedience in common things; in weighty and important matters she has no influence over them. But the woman who is both virtuous, wise, and charming, she who, in a word, combines love and esteem, can send them at her bidding to the end of the world, to war, to glory, and to death at her behest. This is a fine kingdom and worth the winning.
[Note 11] This is the spirit in which Sophie has been educated. She has been trained carefully rather than strictly, and her taste has been followed rather than thwarted. Let us say just a word about her person, according to the description I have given to Emile and the picture he himself has formed of the wife in whom he hopes to find happiness.
[1373:] I cannot repeat too often that I am not dealing with prodigies. Emile is no prodigy, neither is Sophie. He is a man and she is a woman; this is all they have to boast of. In the present confusion between the sexes it is almost a miracle to belong to one's own sex.
[1374:] Sophie is well born and she has a good disposition. She has a very sensitive heart and this extreme sensitivity sometimes makes her imagination run away with her. Her mind is perceptive rather than accurate, her temper is pleasant but variable, her person pleasing though nothing out of the common, her countenance bespeaks a soul and it speaks true. You may meet her with indifference, but you will not leave her without emotion. Others possess good qualities which she lacks, others possess her good qualities in a higher degree, but in no one are these qualities better blended to form a .happy disposition. She knows how to make the best of her very faults, and if she were more perfect she would be less pleasing.
[1375:] Sophie is not beautiful; but in her presence men forget about beautiful women , and they are dissatisfied with themselves. At first sight she is hardly pretty; but the more we see her the prettier she is. She wins where so many lose, and what she wins she keeps. Her eyes might be finer, her mouth more beautiful, her stature more imposing; but no one could have a more graceful figure, a finer complexion, a whiter hand, a daintier foot, a sweeter look, and a more expressive countenance. She does not dazzle; she arouses interest. She delights us, we know not why.
[1376:] Sophie is fond of dress, and she knows how to dress; her mother has no other maid but her. She has taste enough to dress herself well; but she hates rich clothes. Her own are always simple but elegant. She does not like showy but becoming things. She does not know what colors are fashionable, but she makes no mistake about those that suit her. No girl seems more simply dressed, but no one could take more pains over her preparations; no article is selected at random, and yet there is no trace of artificiality. Her dress is very modest in appearance and very coquettish in reality; she does not display her charms, she conceals them, but in such a way as to enhance them. When you see her you say, "That is a good modest girl," but while you are with her, you cannot take your eyes or your thoughts off her, and one might say that this very simple adornment is only put on to be removed bit by bit by the imagination.
[1377:] Sophie has natural gifts. She is aware of them, and they have not been neglected, but never having had a chance of much training she is content to use her pretty voice to sing tastefully and truly; her little feet step lightly, easily, and gracefully. She can always make an easy graceful courtesy. She has had no singing master but her father, no dancing mistress but her mother. A neighbouring organist has given her a few lessons in playing accompaniments on the spinet, and she has improved herself by practice. At first she only wished to show off her hand on the dark keys; then she discovered that the thin clear tone of the spinet made her voice sound sweeter. Little by little she recognised the charms of harmony; as she grew older she at last began to enjoy the charms of expression, to love music for its own sake. But she has taste rather than talent; she cannot read a simple air from notes.
[1378:] Needlework is what Sophie likes best; and the feminine arts have been taught her most carefully, even those you would not expect, such as cutting out and dressmaking. There is nothing she cannot do with her needle, and nothing that she does not take a delight in doing; but lace-making is her favourite occupation, because there is nothing which requires such a pleasing attitude, nothing which calls for such grace and dexterity of finger. She has also studied all the details of housekeeping. She understands cooking and cleaning; she knows the prices of food, and also how to choose it; she can keep accounts accurately, she is her mother's housekeeper. Some day she will be the mother of a family; by managing her father's house she is preparing to manage her own. She can take the place of any of the servants and she is always ready to do so. You cannot give orders unless you can do the work yourself; that is why' her mother sets her to do it. Sophie does not think of that; her first duty is to be a good daughter, and that is all she thinks about for the present. Her one idea is to help her mother and relieve her of some of her anxieties. However, she does not like them all equally well. For instance, she likes dainty food, but she does not like cooking; the details of cookery offend her, and things are never clean enough for her. She is extremely sensitive in this respect and carries her sensitiveness to a fault; she would let the whole dinner boil over into the fire rather than soil her cuffs. She has always disliked inspecting the vegetable garden for the same reason. The soil is dirty, and as soon as she sees the manure heap she fancies there is a disagreeable smell.
[1379:] This defect is the result of her mother's teaching. According to her, cleanliness is one of the most necessary of a woman's duties, a special duty, of the highest importance and a duty imposed by nature. Nothing could be more revolting than a dirty woman, and a husband who tires of her is not to blame. She insisted so strongly on this duty when Sophie was little, she required such absolute cleanliness in her person, clothing, room, work, and toilet, that use has become habit, till it absorbs one half of her time and controls the other; so that she thinks less of how to do a thing than of how to do it without getting dirty.
[1380:] Yet this has not degenerated into mere affectation and softness; there is none of the over refinement of luxury. Nothing but clean water enters her room; she knows no perfumes but the scent of flowers, and her husband will never find anything sweeter than her breath. In conclusion, the attention she pays to the outside does not blind her to the fact that time and strength are meant for greater tasks. Either she does not know or she despises that exaggerated cleanliness of body which degrades the soul. Sophie is more than clean, she is pure.
[1381:] I said that Sophie was fond of good things. She was so by nature; but she became temperate by habit and now she is temperate by virtue. Little girls are not to be controlled, as little boys are to some extent, through their greediness. This tendency may have ill effects on women and it is too dangerous to be left unchecked. When Sophie was little, she did not always return empty handed if she was sent to her mother's cupboard, and she was not quite to be trusted with candies and sugar-almonds. Her mother caught her, took them from her, punished her, and made her go without her dinner. At last she managed to persuade her that candy was bad for the teeth, and that over-eating spoiled the figure. Thus Sophie overcame her faults; and when she grew older other tastes distracted her from this low kind of self-indulgence. With awakening feeling greediness ceases to be the ruling passion, both with men and women. Sophie has preserved her feminine tastes; she likes milk and sweets; she likes pastry and prepared food, but not much meat. She has never tasted wine or spirits; moreover, she eats sparingly; women, who do not work so hard as men, have less waste to repair. In all things she likes what is good, and knows how to appreciate it; but she can also put up with what is not so good, or can go without it.
[1382:] Sophie's mind is pleasing but not brilliant, and thorough but not deep. It is the sort of mind which calls for no remark, since she never seems cleverer or stupider than oneself. When people talk to her they always find what she says attractive, though it may not be highly ornamental according to modern ideas of an educated woman. Her mind has been formed not only by reading, but by conversation with her father and mother, by her own reflections, and by her own observations in the little world in which she has lived. Sophie is naturally happy; as a child she was even giddy; but her mother cured her of her silly ways, little by little, in case too sudden a change should make her self-conscious. Thus she became modest and retiring while still a child, and now that she is a child no longer, she finds it easier to continue this conduct than it would have been to acquire it without knowing why. It is amusing to see her occasionally return to her old ways and indulge in childish mirth and then suddenly check herself, with silent lips, downcast eyes, and rosy blushes; neither child nor woman, she may well partake of both.
[1383:] Sophie is too sensitive to be always good humoured, but too gentle to let this be really disagreeable to other people; it is only herself who suffers. If you say anything that hurts her she does not sulk, but her heart swells; she tries to run away and cry. In the midst of her tears, at a word from her father or mother she returns at once laughing and playing, secretly wiping her eyes and trying to stifle her sobs.
[1384:] Yet she has her whims. If her temper is too much indulged it degenerates into rebellion, and then she forgets herself. But give her time to come round and her way of making you forget her wrongdoing is almost a virtue. If you punish her she is gentle and submissive, and you see that she is more ashamed of the fault than the punishment. If you say nothing, she never fails to make amends, and she does it so frankly and so readily that you cannot be angry with her. She would kiss the ground before the lowest servant and would make no fuss about it; and as soon as she is forgiven, you can see by her delight and her caresses that a load is taken off her heart. In a word, she endures patiently the wrong-doing of others, and she is eager to atone for her own. This amiability is natural to her sex when unspoiled. Woman is made to submit to man and to endure even injustice at his hands. You will never bring young boys to this; their feelings rise in revolt against injustice; nature has not fitted them to put up with it."GravemPelidæ stomachum cedere nescif."HORACE, lib. I. ode vi.
[1385:] Sophie has a religion, but a religion reasonable and simple, with few doctrines and fewer observances; or rather as she knows no essential practice except morality, her whole life is devoted to the service of God and to doing good. In all her parents' teaching of religion she has been trained to a reverent submission; they have often said, "My little girl, this is too hard for you; your husband will teach you when you are grown up." Instead of long sermons about piety, they have been content to preach by their example, and this example is engraved on her heart.
[1386:] Sophie loves virtue. This love has come to be her ruling passion. She loves virtue because there is nothing fairer in itself, she loves it because it is a woman's glory and because a virtuous woman is little lower than the angels; she loves virtue as the only road to real happiness, because she sees nothing but poverty, neglect, unhappiness, shame, and disgrace in the life of a bad woman; she loves virtue because it is dear to her revered father and to her tender and worthy mother. They are not content to be happy in their own virtue, they desire hers; and she finds her chief happiness in the hope of making them happy. All these feelings inspire an enthusiasm which stirs her heart and keeps all its budding passions in subjection to this noble enthusiasm. Sophie will be chaste and good till her dying day; she has vowed it in her secret heart, and not before she knew how hard it would be to keep her vow. She made this vow at a time when she would have revoked it had she been the slave of her senses.
[1387:] Sophie is not so fortunate as to be a charming French woman, cold-hearted and vain, who would rather attract attention than give pleasure, who seeks amusement rather than delight. She suffers from a consuming desire for love; it even disturbs and troubles her heart in the midst of festivities. She has lost her former liveliness, and her taste for lively games; far from being afraid of the tedium of solitude she desires it. Her thoughts go out to him who will make solitude sweet to her. She finds strangers tedious; she wants a lover, not a circle of admirers. She would rather give pleasure to one good man than be a general favorite or win that applause of society which lasts but a day and to-morrow is turned to scorn.
[1388:] A woman's judgment develops sooner than a man's. Being on the defensive from her childhood on, and intrusted with a treasure so hard to keep, she is earlier acquainted with good and evil. Sophie is precocious by temperament in everything, and her judgment is more formed than that of most girls of her age. There is nothing strange in that; maturity is not always reached at the same age.
[1389:] Sophie has been taught the duties and rights of her own sex and of ours. She knows men's faults and women's vices; she also knows their corresponding good qualities and virtues, and has them by heart. No one can have a higher ideal of a virtuous woman, but she would rather think of a virtuous man, a man of true worth. She knows that she is made for such a man, that she is worthy of him, that she can make him as happy as he will make her. She is sure she will know him when she sees him; the difficulty is to find him.
[1390:] Women are by nature judges of a man's worth, as he is of theirs. This right is reciprocal, and it is recognised as such both by men and women. Sophie recognises this right and exercises it, but with the modesty becoming her youth, her inexperience, and her position. She confines her judgment to what she knows, and she only forms an opinion when it may help to illustrate some useful precept. She is extremely careful what she says about those who are absent, particularly if they are women. She thinks that talking about each other makes women spiteful and satirical; so long as they only talk about men they are merely just. So Sophie stops there. As to women she never says anything at all about them, except to tell the good she knows; she thinks this is only fair to her sex; and if she knows no good of any woman, she says nothing, and that is enough.
[1391:] Sophie has little knowledge of society, but she is observant and obliging, and all that she does is full of grace. A happy disposition does more for her than much art. She has a certain politeness of her own that is not the result of any formula, is not dependent on current styles, nor does it change along with them, but that arises from a true desire to please and in fact does please. She knows nothing of the language of empty compliments nor does she invent more elaborate compliments of her own; she does not say that she is greatly obliged, that you do her too much honour, that you should not take so much trouble, etc. Still less does she try to make phrases of her own. She responds to an attention or a customary piece of politeness by a courtesy or a mere "Thank you," but this phrase in her mouth is worth more than another. If you do her a real service, she lets her heart speak, and its words are no empty compliment. She has never allowed French manners to make her a slave to appearances. When she goes from one room to another she does not take the arm of an old gentleman, whom she would much rather help. When a perfumed dandy offers her such impertinent gallantries, she leaves him on the staircase and strides into the room saying that she is not lame. Indeed, she will never wear high heels though she is not tall; her feet are small enough to dispense with them.
[1392:] Not only does she adopt a silent and respectful attitude towards women, but also towards married men, or those who are much older than herself. She will never take her place above them unless compelled to do so; and she will return to her own lower place as soon as she can. For she knows that the rights of age take precedence of those of sex, since age is presumably wiser than youth and wisdom should be held in the greatest honor.
[1393:] With young people of her own age it is another matter. She requires a different manner to gain their respect, and she knows how to adopt it without dropping the modest ways which become her. If they themselves are shy and modest she will gladly preserve the friendly familiarity of youth; their innocent conversation will be lively but decent. If they become serious they must say something useful; if they become silly, she soon puts a stop to it, for she has an utter contempt for the jargon of gallantry, which she considers an insult to her sex. She feels sure that the man she seeks does not speak that jargon, and she will never permit in another what would be displeasing to her in him whose character is engraved on her heart. Her high opinion of the rights of her sex, her pride in the purity of her feelings, that active virtue which is the basis of her self-respect, make her indignant at the sentimental speeches intended for her amusement. She does not receive them with open anger, but with a disconcerting irony or an unexpected iciness. If a fair Apollo displays his charms and makes use of his wit in the praise of her wit, her beauty, and her grace; at the risk of offending him she is quite capable of saying politely, "Sir, I am afraid I know that better than you; if we have nothing more interesting to talk about, I think we may put an end to this conversation." To say this with a deep courtesy, and then to withdraw to a considerable distance, is the work of a moment. Ask your lady-killers if it is easy to continue to babble to such an unsympathetic ear.
[1394:] It is not that she is not fond of praise if it is really sincere, and if she thinks you believe what you say. You must show that you appreciate her merit if you would have her believe you. Her proud spirit may take pleasure in homage that is based upon esteem, but empty compliments are always rejected. Sophie was not meant to practise the small arts of the dancing-girl.
[1395:] With a judgment so mature, and formed in every way like a woman of twenty, Sophie at fifteen is no longer treated as a child by her parents. No sooner do they perceive the first signs of youthful restlessness than they hasten to anticipate its development. Their conversations with her are wise and tender. These wise and tender conversations are in keeping with her age and disposition. If her disposition is what I imagine why should not her father speak to her somewhat thus:
[1396:] "You are a big girl now, Sophie, you will soon be a woman. We want you to be happy, for our own sakes as well as yours, for our happiness depends on yours. A good girl finds her own happiness in the happiness of a good man, so we must consider your marriage. We must think of it in good time, for marriage makes or mars our whole life, and we cannot have too much time to consider it.
[1397:] "There is nothing so hard to choose as a good husband, unless it is a good wife. You will be that rare creature, Sophie; you will be the crown of our life and the blessing of our declining years. But however worthy you are, there are worthier people upon earth. There is no one who would not do himself honor by marriage with you; there are many who would do you even greater honor than themselves. Among these we must try to find one who suits you; we must get to know him and introduce you to him.
[1398:] "The greatest possible happiness in marriage depends on so many points of agreement that it is useless to expect to secure them all. We must first consider the more important matters. If others are to be found along with them, so much the better; if not we must do without them. Perfect happiness is not to be found in this world, but we can, at least, avoid the worst form of unhappiness, that for which ourselves are to blame.
[1399:] "There is a natural suitability, there is a suitability of established usage, and a suitability which is merely conventional. Parents should decide as to the latter two, and the children themselves should decide as to the former. Marriages arranged by parents only depend on a suitability of custom and convention: it is not two people who are united, but two positions and two properties. But these things may change, the people remain, they are always there; and in spite of fortune it is the personal relation that makes a happy or an unhappy marriage.
[1400:] "Your mother had rank, I had wealth; this was all that our parents considered in arranging our marriage. I lost my money, she lost her position. Forgotten by her family, what good did it do her to born a lady? In the midst of our misfortunes, the union of our hearts has outweighed them all. The similarity of our tastes led us to choose this retreat; we live happily in our poverty, we are all in all to each other. Sophie is a treasure we hold in common, and we thank Heaven which has bestowed this treasure and deprived us of all others. You see, my child, where we have been led to by Providence: the conventional motives which brought about our marriage no longer exist; we are ahppy only because of those things that were not taken into account.
[1401:] "Husband and wife should choose each other. A mutual liking should be the first bond between them. They should follow the guidance of their own eyes and hearts. For since their first duty, once they are united, is to love one another, and since loving or not loving does not depend on ourselves, this duty necessarily brings another -- which is to begin loving each other before becoming united. That is the law of nature, and no power can abrogate it. Those who have fettered it by so many legal restrictions have had more regard for apparent order than for the happiness of marriage or the morals of the citizens. You see, my dear Sophie, we do not preach a harsh morality. It tends to make you your own mistress and to make us leave the choice of your husband to yourself.
[1402:] "When we have told you our reasons for giving you full liberty, it is only fair to speak of your reasons for making a wise use of that liberty. My child, you are good and sensible, upright and pious, you have the accomplishments of a good woman and you are not altogether without charms. But you are poor. You have the gifts most worthy of esteem, but not those which are most esteemed. Do not seek what is beyond your reach, and let your ambition be controlled, not by your ideas or ours, but by the opinion of others. If it were merely a question of equal merits, I would not know what limits to impose on your hopes; but do not let your ambitions outrun your fortune, and remember it is very small. Although a man worthy of you would not consider this inequality an obstacle, you must do what he would not do. Sophie must follow her mother's example and only enter a family which counts it an honor to receive her. You never saw our wealth, you were born in our poverty. You make it sweet for us, and you share it without hardship. Believe me; Sophie, do not seek those good things we indeed thank heaven for having taken from us; we did not know what happiness was till we lost our money.
[1403:] "You are so amiable that you will win affection, and you are not so poor as to be a burden. You will be sought in marriage; it may be by those who are unworthy of you. If they showed themselves in their true colors, you would rate them at their real value; all their outward show would not long deceive you. But though your judgment is good and you know what merit is when you see it, you are inexperienced and you do not know how people can conceal their real selves. A skillful faker might study your tastes in order to seduce you and make a pretence of those virtues which he does not possess. You would be ruined, Sophie, before you knew what you were doing, and you would only perceive your error when you had cause to lament it. The most dangerous snare, the only snare which reason cannot avoid, is that of the senses. If ever you have the misfortune to fall into its toils, you will perceive nothing but fantasies and illusions; your eyes will be fascinated, your judgment troubled, your will corrupted; your very error will be dear to you, and even if you were able to perceive it you would not be willing to escape from it. My child, I trust you to Sophie's own reason; I do not trust you to the fantasies of your own heart. Judge for yourself so long as your heart is untouched, but when you love betake yourself to your mother's care.
[1404:] I propose a treaty between us which shows our esteem for you and restores the order of nature between us. Parents choose a husband for their daughter and she is only consulted as a matter of form; that is the custom. We will do just the opposite; you will choose, and we will be consulted. Use your right, Sophie, use it freely and wisely. The husband suitable for you should be chosen by you not us. But it is for us to judge whether he is really suitable, or whether, without knowing it, you are only following your own wishes. Birth, wealth, position, conventional opinions will count for nothing with us. Choose a good man whose person and character suit you; whatever he may be in other respects, we will accept him as our son-in-law. His wealth will always be adequate if he has strong arms, good manners, and loves his family. His position will be good enough if it is ennobled by virtue. If everybody blames us, we do not care. We do not seek public approbation; your happiness will be enough."
[1405:] I cannot tell my readers what effect such words would have upon girls brought up in their fashion. As for Sophie, she will have no words to reply. Shame and emotion will not permit her to express herself easily; but I am sure that what was said will remain engraved upon her heart as long as she lives, and that if any human resolution may be trusted, we may rely on her determination to deserve her parent's esteem.
[1406:] At worst let us suppose her endowed with an ardent disposition which will make her impatient of long delays. I maintain that her judgment, her knowledge, her taste, her refinement, and. above all, the sentiments in which she has been brought up from childhood will outweigh the impetuosity of the senses and enable her to offer a prolonged resistance, if not to overcome them altogether. She would rather die a virgin martyr than distress her parents by marrying a worthless man and exposing herself to the unhappiness of an ill-assorted marriage. Ardent as an Italian and sentimental as an Englishwoman, she has as a curb upon her heart and senses the pride of a Spaniard, who even when she seeks a lover does not easily discover one worthy of her.
[1407:] Not every one can realise the motive power to be found in a love of what is right nor the inner strength which results from a genuine love of virtue. There are men who think that everything great is a fantasy, men who with their vile and degraded reason will never recognise the power over human passions which is wielded by the very madness of virtue. You can only teach such men by examples. If they persist in denying their existence, so much the worse for them. If I told them that Sophie is no imaginary person, that her name alone is my invention, that her education, her conduct, her character, her very features, really existed, and that her loss is still mourned by a very worthy family, they would, no doubt, refuse to believe me. But indeed why should I not risk telling word for word the story of a girl so like Sophie that this story might be hers without surprising any one? Believe it or not, it is all the same to me. Call my history fiction if you will; in any case I have explained my method and furthered my purpose.
[1408:] This young girl with the temperament which I have attributed to Sophie was so like her in other respects that she was worthy of the name, and so we will continue to use it. After the conversation related above, her father and mother thought that suitable husbands would not be likely to offer themselves in the village where they lived; so they decided to send her to spend the winter in town, under the care of an aunt who was privately acquainted with the object of the journey. For Sophy's heart throbbed with noble pride at the thought of her self-control; and however much she might want to marry she would rather have died a maid than have brought herself to go in search of a husband.
[1409:] In response to her parents' wishes her aunt introduced her to her friends, took her into company, both private and public, showed her society, or rather showed her in society, for Sophie paid little heed to its bustle. Yet it was plain that she did not shrink from young men of pleasing appearance and modest seemly behaviour. Her very shyness had a charm of its own, which was very much like coquetry; but after talking to them once or twice she repulsed them. She soon exchanged that air of authority which seems to accept men's homage for a humbler bearing and a still more chilling politeness. Always watchful over her conduct, she gave them no chance of doing her the least service. It was perfectly plain that she was determined not to accept any one of them.
[1410:] Sensitive hearts never enjoy noisy pleasures -- the empty and barren delights of those who feel nothing and who think that to stupify life is to enjoy it. Sophie did not find what she sought, and she felt sure she never would, so she got tired of the town. She loved her parents dearly and nothing made up for their absence, nothing could make her forget them. She went home long before the time fixed for the end of her visit.
[1411:] Hardly had she resumed her duties at home when they perceived that her temper had changed though her conduct was unaltered. She was forgetful, impatient, sad, and dreamy; she wept in secret. At first they thought she was in love and was ashamed to admit it; they spoke to her, but she repudiated the idea. She protested she had seen no one who could touch her heart, and Sophie always spoke the truth.
[1412:] Yet her languor steadily increased, and her health began to give way. Her mother was anxious about her, and determined to know the reason for this change. She took her aside, and with the winning speech and the irresistible caresses which only a mother can employ, she said, "My child, whom I have borne beneath my heart, whom I bear ever in my affection, confide your secret to your mother's bosom. What secrets are these which a mother may not know? Who pities your sufferings, who shares them, who would gladly relieve them, if not your father and myself? Ah, my child l would you have me die of grief for your sorrow without letting me share it?"
[1413:] Far from hiding her griefs from her mother, the young girl asked nothing better than to have her as friend and comforter. But she could not speak for shame; her modesty could find no words to describe a condition so unworthy of her as the emotion which disturbed her senses in spite of all her efforts. At length her very shame gave her mother a clue to her difficulty, and she drew from her the humiliating confession. Far from distressing her with reproaches or unjust blame, she consoled her, pitied her, wept over her. She was too wise to make a crime of an evil which only virtue made so cruel. But why put up with such an evil when there was no necessity to do so, when the remedy was so easy and so legitimate? Why did she not use the freedom they had granted her? Why did she not take a husband? Why did she not make her choice? Did she not know that she was perfectly independent in this matter, that whatever her choice, it would be approved, for it was sure to be good? They had sent her to town, but she would not stay; many suitors had offered themselves, but she would have none of them. What did she expect? What did she want? What an inexplicable contradiction?
[1414:] The reply was simple. If it were only a question of the partner of her youth, her choice would soon be made. But a master for life is not so easily chosen; and since the two cannot be separated, people must often wait and sacrifice their youth before they find the man with whom they could spend their life. Such was Sophie's case; she wanted a lover, but this lover must be her husband; and to discover a heart such as she required, a lover and husband were equally difficult to find. All these dashing young men were only her equals in age; in everything else they were found lacking. Their empty wit, their vanity, their affectations of speech, their ill-regulated conduct, their frivolous imitations all disgusted her. She sought a man and she found monkeys; she sought a soul and there was none to be found.
[1415:] "I am so unhappy! "she said to her mother; "I need to love and yet I see nothing that pleases me. My heart rejects every one who appeals to my senses. Every one of them both stirs my passions and revolts them. A liking unaccompanied by respect cannot last. That is not the sort of man for your Sophie; his delightful image is too deeply engraved in her heart. She can love only him, she can only make him happy, she can be happy only with him alone. She would rather consume herself in ceaseless conflicts, she would rather die free and wretched, than be driven desperate by the company of a man she did not love, a man she would make as unhappy as herself; she would rather die than live to suffer."
[1416:] Amazed at these strange ideas, her mother found them so peculiar that she could not fail to suspect some mystery. Sophie was neither affected nor absurd. How could such exaggerated delicacy exist in one who had been so carefully taught from her childhood to adapt herself to those with whom she must live, and to make a virtue of necessity? This ideal of the delightful man with which she was so enchanted, who appeared so often in her conversation, made her mother suspect that there was some foundation for her caprices which was still unknown to her, and that Sophie had not told her all. The unhappy girl, overwhelmed with her secret grief, was only too eager to confide it to another. Her mother urged her to speak; she hesitated, she yielded, and leaving the room without a word, she presently returned with a book in her hand. "Have pity on your unhappy daughter. There is no remedy for her grief, her tears cannot be dried. You wish to know the cause. Well, here it is," she said, flinging the book on the table. Her mother took the book and opened it; it was The Adventures of Telemachus. At first she could make nothing of this riddle. Only by means of questions and vague replies did she discover to her great surprise that her daughter was the rival of Eucharis.
[1417:] Sophie was in love with Telemachus, and loved him with a passion which nothing could cure. When her father and mother became aware of her infatuation, they laughed at it and tried to cure her by reasoning with her. They were mistaken; reason was not altogether on their side. Sophie had her own reason and knew how to use it. Many a time reduces them to silence by turning their own arguments against them, by showing them that it was all their own fault for not having trained her to suit the men of that century; that she would be compelled to adopt her husband's way of thinking or he must adopt hers, that they had made the former course impossible by the way she had been brought up, and that the latter was just what she wanted. "Give me," said she, "a man who holds the same opinions as I do, or one who will be willing to learn them from me, and I will marry him; but until then, why do you scold me? Pity me. I am miserable but not crazy. Is the heart controlled by the will? Did my father not ask that very question? Is it my fault if I love what has no existence? I am no visionary. I desire no prince; I seek no Telemachus. I know he is only a fiction; I seek some one like him. And why should there be no such person, since there is such a person as I, I who feel that my heart is like his? No, let us not wrong humanity so greatly, let us not think that an amiable and virtuous man is a fantasy. He exists, he lives, perhaps he is seeking me; he is seeking a soul which is capable of love for him. But who is he, where is he? I do not know; he is not among those I have seen; and no doubt I shall never see him. Oh! mother, why did you make virtue too lovable? If I can love nothing less, you are more to blame than I."
[1418:] Must I continue this sad story to its close? Must I describe the long struggles that preceded it? Must I show an impatient mother exchanging her former caresses for severity? Must I paint an angry father forgetting his former promises, and treating the most virtuous of daughters as a mad woman? Must I portray the unhappy girl, more than ever devoted to her imaginary hero, because of the persecution brought upon her by that devotion, drawing nearer step by step to her death, and descending into the grave when they were about to force her to the altar? No; I will not dwell upon these gloomy scenes. I have no need to go so far to show, by what I consider a sufficiently striking example, that in spite of the prejudices arising from the manners of our age, the enthusiasm for the good and the beautiful is no more foreign to women than to men and that there is nothing which, under nature's guidance cannot be obtained from them as well as from us.
[1419:] You stop me here to inquire whether it is nature which teaches us to take such pains to repress our immoderate desires. No, I reply, but neither is it nature who gives us these immoderate desires. Now, all that is not from nature is contrary to nature, as I have proved a hundred times.
[1420:] Let us give Emile his Sophie. Let us restore this sweet girl to life and provide her with a less vivid imagination and a happier fate. I desired to paint an ordinary woman, but by endowing her with a great soul, I have disturbed her reason. I have gone astray. Let us retrace our steps. Sophie has only a good disposition and an ordinary heart; her education is responsible for everything in which she excels other women.--------------------------------------
[1421:] In this book I intended to describe all that might be done and to leave every one free to choose what he or she could out of all the good things I described. I meant to train a companion for Emile from the very first, and to educate them for each other and with each other. But on consideration I thought all these premature arrangements undesirable, for it was absurd to plan the marriage of two children before I could tell whether this union was in accordance with nature and whether they were really suited to each other. We must not confuse what is suitable in a wilderness with what is suitable in civilised life. In the former, any woman will suit any man, for both are still in their primitive and undifferentiated condition; in the latter, since all their characteristics have been developed by social institutions, and since each mind has taken its own settled form, not from education alone but by the co-operation, more or less well-regulated, of natural disposition and education, we can only make a match by introducing them to each other to see if they suit each other in every respect; or at least we can let them make that choice which gives the most promise of mutual suitability.
[1422:] The difficulty is that while social life develops character, it differentiates classes; and since these two groups do not correspond, the greater the difference between social conditions, the greater the difficulty of finding the corresponding character. As a result we have badly arrranged marriages and all their accompanying evils. And we find that it follows logically that the further we get from equality, the greater the change in our natural feelings. The wider the distance between great and small, the more the marriage tie becomes slack. The deeper the gulf between rich and poor, the fewer true husbands and fathers there are. Neither masters nor slaves have families; they are aware only of their status.
[1423:] Do you want to guard against these abuses and create happy marriages? Then get rid of your prejudices, forget human institutions, and consult nature. Do not join together those who are only alike in one given condition, those who will not suit one another if that condition is changed; but those who are adapted to one another in every situation, in every country, and in every rank in which they may be placed. I do not say that conventional considerations are of no importance in marriage, but I do say that the influence of natural relations is so much more important that it alone decides our fate in life; and that if there were an agreement of taste, temper, feeling, and disposition it should induce a wise father, even if he were a prince, to marry his son without a moment's hesitation to the woman so adapted to him, even if she were born in a bad home, even if she were the hangman's daughter. Yes, I maintain that even if all the worst misfortunes imaginable were to fall on the two spouses thus united, still they would enjoy more real happiness crying together than if they possessed all the riches of the world poisoned by divided hearts.
[1424:] Instead of providing a wife for Emile in childhood I have waited till I knew what would suit him. It is not for me to decide, but for nature; my business is to discover the choice nature has made. I say my business, not his father's; for when he entrusted his son to my care, he gave up his place to me. He gave me his rights; it is I who am really Emile's father; it is I who have made a man of him. I would have refused to educate him if I were not free to marry him according to his own choice, which is mine. Nothing but the pleasure of bestowing happiness on a man can repay me for the cost of making him capable of happiness.
[1425:] Do not suppose, however, that I have delayed to find a wife for Emile until I sent him in search of her. This search is only a pretext for acquainting him with women, so that he may perceive the value of a suitable wife. Sophie was discovered long since; Emile may even have seen her already, but he will not recognise her till the time is come.
[1426:] Although equality of rank is not essential in marriage, yet this equality along with other kinds of suitability increases their value; it is not to be weighed against any one of them, but, other things being equal, it turns the scale.
[1427:] A man, unless he is a king, cannot seek a wife in any and every class. If he himself is free from prejudices, he will find prejudices in others; and this girl or that might perhaps suit him and yet she would be beyond his reach. A wise father will therefore restrict his inquiries within the bounds of prudence. He should not wish to marry his pupil into a family above his own, for that is not within his power. If he could do so he ought not desire it; for what difference does rank make to a young man, at least to my pupil? Yet, if he rises he is exposed to all sorts of real evils which he will feel all his life long. I even say that he should not try to adjust the balance between different gifts, such as rank and money; for each of these adds less to the value of the other than the amount deducted from its own value in the process of adjustment. Moreover, we can never agree as to a common denominator; and finally the preference, which each feels for his own surroundings, paves the way for discord between the two families and often to difficulties between husband and wife.
[1428:] It makes a considerable difference as to the suitability of a marriage whether a man marries above or beneath him. The former case is quite contrary to reason, the latter is more in conformity with reason. Since the family is only connected with society through its head, it is the rank of that head which decides that of the family as a whole. When he marries into a lower rank, a man does not lower himself, he raises his wife. If, on the other hand, he marries above his position, he lowers his wife and does not raise himself. Thus there is in the first case good unmixed with evil, in the other evil unmixed with good. Moreover, the law of nature bids the woman obey the man. If he takes a wife from a lower class, natural and civil law are in accordance and all goes well. When he marries a woman of higher rank it is just the opposite case; the man must choose between diminished rights or imperfect gratitude; he must be ungrateful or despised. Then the wife, laying claim to authority, makes herself a tyrant over her lawful head; and the master, who has become a slave, is the most ridiculous and miserable of creatures. Such are the unhappy favorites whom the sovereigns of Asia honour and torment with their alliance; people tell us that if they desire to sleep with their wife they must enter by the foot of the bed.
[1429:] I expect that many of my readers will remember that I think women have a natural gift for managing men, and will accuse me of contradicting myself. Yet they are mistaken. There is a vast difference between claiming the right to command and managing him who commands. Woman's reign is a reign of gentleness, tact, and kindness; her commands are caresses, her threats are tears. She should reign in the home as a minister reigns in the state, by contriving to be ordered to do what she wants. In this sense, I grant you, that the best managed homes are those where the wife has most authority. But when she despises the voice of the head of the household, when she desires to usurp his rights and herself take command, the result of this disordering is never anything but misery, scandal, and dishonor.
[1430:] There remains the choice between our equals and our inferiors; and I think we ought also to make certain restrictions with regard to the latter. For it is hard to find in the lowest ranks of the people a >woman who is able to make a good man happy, not because the lower classes are more vicious than the higher, but because they have so little idea of what is good and beautiful, and because the injustice of other classes makes its very vices seem right in the eyes of this class.
[1431:] By nature man rarely thinks. He learns to think as he acquires the other arts, but with even greater difficulty. In both sexes alike I am only aware of two really distinct classes, those who think and those who do not; and this difference is almost entirely one of education. A man who thinks should not ally himself with a woman who does not think, for he loses the chief delight of social life if he has a wife who cannot share his thoughts. People who spend their whole life in working for a living have no ideas beyond their work and their own interests, and their mind seems to reside in their arms. This ignorance is not necessarily harmful either to their honesty or their morals; it is often helpful, for we often content ourselves with thinking about our duties, and end up putting mere jargon in the place of things. Conscience is the most enlightened philosopher; to be an honest man we need not read Cicero's De 0fficiis, and the best woman in the world is probably she who knows least about goodness. But it is none the less true that only a cultivated mind makes intercourse pleasant, and it is a sad thing for a father of a family, who delights in his home, to be forced to shut himself up in himself and to be unable to make himself understood.
[1432:] Moreover, if a woman is quite unaccustomed to think, how can she bring up her children? How will she know what is good for them? How can she incline them towards virtues of which she is ignorant, to merits of which she has no conception? She can only flatter or threaten, she can only make them insolent or timid. She will make them into performing monkeys or noisy little rascals, never intelligent or pleasing children.
[1433:] Therefore it is not fitting that a man of education should choose a wife who has none, or take her from a class where she cannot be expected to have any education. But I would a thousand times rather have a homely girl, simply brought up, than a learned lady and a wit who would make a literary circle of my house and install herself as its president. A female wit is a scourge to her husband, her children, her friends, her servants, to everybody. From the lofty height of her genius she scorns every womanly duty, and she is always trying to make a man of herself after the fashion of Mlle. de L'Enclos. Outside her home she always makes herself ridiculous and she is very rightly a butt for criticism, as we always are when we try to escape from our own position into one for which we are unfitted. These highly talented women only get a hold over fools. We can always tell what artist or friend holds the pen or pencil when they are at work; we know what discreet man of letters dictates their oracles in private. This trickery is unworthy of a decent woman. If she really had talents, her pretentiousness would degrade them. Her honour is to be unknown; her glory is the respect of her husband; her joys the happiness of her family. I appeal to my readers to give me an honest answer; when you enter a woman's room what makes you think more highly of her, what makes you address her with more respect-- to see her busy with feminine occupations, with her household duties, with her children's clothes about her, or to find her writing verses at her dressing table surrounded with pamphlets of every kind and with notes on tinted paper? If there were none but wise men upon earth such a woman would die an old maid. "Quææ cur nolim to ducere, galla? diserta es."MARTIAL xi. 20.
[1434:] Looks must next be considered. They are the first thing that strikes us and they ought to be the last. Still they should not count for nothing. I think that great beauty is rather to be shunned than sought after in marriage. Possession soon exhausts our appreciation of beauty; in six weeks' time we think no more about it, but its dangers endure as long as life itself. Unless a beautiful woman is an angel, her husband is the most miserable of men; and even if she were an angel he would still be the centre of a hostile crowd and she could not prevent it. If extreme ugliness were not repulsive I should prefer it to extreme beauty; for before very long the husband would cease to notice either, but beauty would still have its disadvantages and ugliness its advantages. But ugliness which is actually repulsive is the worst misfortune. Repulsion increases rather than diminishes, and it turns to hatred. Such a union is a hell upon earth; better death than such a marriage.
[1435:] Desire mediocrity in all things, even in beauty. A pleasant attractive countenance, which inspires kindly feelings rather than love, is what we should prefer. The husband runs no risk, and the advantages are common to husband and wife. Charm is less perishable than beauty; it is a living thing, which constantly renews itself, and after thirty years of married life, the charms of a good woman delight her husband even as they did on the wedding day.
[1436:] Such are the considerations which decided my choice of Sophie. Brought up, like Emile, by nature, she is better suited to him than any other; she will be his true mate. She is his equal in birth and character, his inferior in fortune. She makes no great impression at first sight, but day by day reveals fresh charms. Her chief influence only takes effect gradually, it is only discovered in friendly intercourse; and her husband will feel it more than any one. Her education is neither showy nor neglected; she has taste without deep study, talent without art, judgment without learning. Her mind knows little, but it is trained to learn; it is well-tilled soil ready for the sower. She has read no book but Barème and Telemachus which happened to fall into her hands; but no girl who can feel so passionately towards Telemachus can have a heart without feeling or a mind without discernment. What charming ignorance! Happy is he who is destined to be her tutor. She will not be her husband's teacher but his student; far from seeking to control his tastes, she will share them. She will suit him far better than a blue-stocking and he will have the pleasure of teaching her everything. It is time they made acquaintance; let us try to plan a meeting.
[1437:] When we leave Paris we are sorrowful and wrapped in thought. This Babel is not our home. Emile casts a scornful glance towards the great city, saying angrily, "We have wasted so many days of futile searching! It is not here that I'll find my heart's spouse. My friend, you knew it, but my time costs you nothing, and my pains hardly make you suffer." With steady look and firm voice I reply, "Emile, do you mean what you say?" At once he flings his arms round my neck and clasps me to his breast without speaking. This is always his answer when he knows he is wrong.
[1438:] And now we are wandering through the country like true knights errant. Yet we are not seeking adventures when we leave Paris; we are escaping from them. Now fast now slow, we wander through the country like knights-errants. By following my usual practice the taste for it has become established; and I do not suppose any of my readers are such slaves of custom as to picture us dozing in a post-chaise with closed windows, travelling, yet seeing nothing, observing nothing, making the time between our start and our arrival a mere blank, and losing in the speed of our journey all the time we meant to save.
[1439:] Men say life is short, and I see them doing their best to shorten it. Since they do not know how to spend their time they lament the swiftness of its flight, and I perceive that for them it goes only too slowly. Intent merely on the object of their pursuit, they watch unwillingly the space between them and it. One desires to-morrow, another looks a month ahead, another ten years beyond that. No one wants to live today, no one contents himself with the present hour, all complain that it passes slowly. When they complain that time flies, they lie. They would gladly purchase the power to hasten it; they would gladly spend their fortune to get rid of their whole life; and there is probably not a single one who would not have reduced his life to a few hours if he had been free to get rid of those hours he found tedious, and those which separated him from the desired moment. A man spends his whole life rushing from Paris to Versailles, from Versailles to Paris, from town to country, from country to town, from one district of the town to another. But he would not know what to do with his time if he had not discovered this way of wasting it. By leaving his business on purpose to find something to do in coming back to it, he thinks he is saving the time he spends, which would otherwise be unoccupied. Or maybe he rushes for the sake of rushing, and travels fast in order to return in the same fashion. When will mankind cease to slander nature? Why do you complain that life is short when it is never short enough for you? If there were just one of you, able to moderate his desires so that he did not desire the flight of time, he would never find life too short. For him life and the joy of life would be one and the same. Should he die young, he would still die full of days.
[1440:] If this were the only advantage of my way of travelling it would be enough. I have brought Emile up neither to desire nor to wait, but to enjoy; and when his desires are drawn beyond the present, their ardour is not so great as to make time seem tedious. He will not only enjoy the delights of longing, but the delights of approaching the object of his desires; and his passions are under such restraint that he lives to a great extent in the present.
[1441:] So we do not travel like couriers but like explorers. We do not merely consider the beginning and the end, but the space between. The journey itself is a delight. We do not travel sitting, dismally imprisoned, so to speak, in a tightly closed cage. We do not travel with the ease and comfort of ladies. We do not deprive ourselves of the fresh air, nor the sight of the things about us, nor the opportunity of examining them at our pleasure. Emile will never enter an enclosed carriage, nor will he ride fast unless in a great hurry. But what cause has Emile for haste? None but the joy of life. Shall I add to this the desire to do good when he can? No, for that is itself one of the joys of life.
[1442:] I can only think of one way of travelling pleasanter than travelling on horseback, and that is to travel on foot. You start at your own time, you stop when you will, you do as much or as little as you choose. You see the country, you turn off to the right or left; you examine anything which interests you, you stop to admire every view. If I see a stream, I wander by its banks; a leafy wood, I seek its shade; a cave, I enter it; a quarry, I study its geology. If I like a place, I stop there. As soon as I am weary of it, I go on. I am independent of horses and postillions; I need not stick to regular routes or good roads; I go anywhere where a man can go; I see all that a man can see: and since I am quite independent of everybody, I enjoy all the freedom man can enjoy. If I am stopped by bad weather and find myself getting bored, then I take horses. If I am tired -- but Emile is hardly ever tired; he is strong; why should he get tired? There is no hurry. If he stops, why should he be bored? He always finds some amusement. He works at a trade; he uses his arms to rest his feet.
[1443:] To travel on foot is to travel in the fashion of Thales, Plato, and Pythagoras. I find it hard to understand how a philosopher can bring himself to travel in any other way, how he can tear himself from the study of the wealth which lies before his eyes and beneath his feet. Is there any one with an interest in agriculture, who does not want to know the special products of the district through which he is passing, and their method of cultivation? Is there any one with a taste for natural history, who can pass a piece of ground without examining it, a rock without breaking off a piece of it, hills without looking for plants, and stones without seeking for fossils? Your town-bred scientists study natural history in cabinets; they have small specimens; they know their names but nothing of their nature. Emile's museum is richer than that of kings; it is the whole world. Everything is in its right place. The Naturalist who is its curator has taken care to arrange it in the fairest order; Dauberton could do no better.
[1444:] What varied pleasures we enjoy in this delightful way of travelling, not even counting our increasing health and a cheerful spirit. I notice that those who ride in nice, well-padded carriages are always wrapped in thought, gloomy, fault-finding, or sick, while those who go on foot are always happy, light-hearted, and delighted with everything. How cheerful we are when we get near our lodging for the night! How tasty is the coarse food! How we linger at table enjoying our rest! How soundly we sleep on a hard bed! If you only want to get to a place you may ride in a post-chaise; if you want to travel you must go on foot.
[1445:] If Sophie is not forgotten before we have gone fifty leagues in the way I propose, either I am a bungler or Emile lacks curiosity, For with an elementary knowledge of so many things, it is hardly to be supposed that he will not be tempted to extend his knowledge. It is knowledge that makes us curious; and Emile knows just enough to want to know more.
[1446:] One thing leads on to another, and we make our way forward. If I chose a distant object for the end of our first journey, it is not difficult to find an excuse for it. When we leave Paris we must seek a wife at a distance.
[1447:] A few days later having wandered further than usual among hills and valleys where no road was to be seen, we loose our way completely. No matter, all roads are alike if they bring you to your journey's end, but if you are hungry they must lead somewhere. Luckily we come across a peasant who took us to his cottage. We enjoy his poor dinner with a hearty appetite. When he sees how hungry and tired we are he says, "If the Lord had led you to the other side of the hill you would have had a better welcome, you would have found a good resting place, such good, kindly people! They could not wish to do more for you than I, but they are richer, though folks say they used to be much better off. Still they are not reduced to poverty, and the whole country-side is the better for what they have."
[1448:] When Emile hears of these good people his heart warms to them. "My friend," he says, looking at me, "let us visit this house, whose owners are a blessing to the district. I would be very glad to see them; perhaps they will be pleased to see us too; I am sure we would be welcome; we would just suit each other."
[1449:] Our host tells us how to find our way to the house and we set off, but lose our way in the woods. We are caught in a heavy rainstorm, which delays us further. At last we find the right path and in the evening we reach the house that was described to us. It is the only house among the cottages of the little hamlet, and though plain it has an air of dignity. We go up to the door and ask for hospitality. We are taken to the owner of the house, who questions us courteously. Without telling him the object of our journey, we tell him why we had left our path. His former wealth enables him to judge a man's position by his manners; those who have lived in society are rarely mistaken. With this passport we are admitted.
[1450:] The room we are shown into is very small, but clean and comfortable; a fire is lighted, and we find linen, clothes, and everything we need. "Why," says Emile, in astonishment, "one would think they were expecting us. The peasant was quite right; how kind and attentive, how considerate, and for strangers too! I would think I am living in the times of Homer." "I am glad you feel this," I say, "but you need not be surprised. Where strangers are scarce, they are welcome. Nothing makes people more hospitable than the fact that calls upon their hospitality are rare; when guests are frequent there is an end to hospitality. In Homer's time, people rarely travelled, and travellers were everywhere welcome. Very likely we are the only people who have passed this way this year." "Never mind," he says, "to know how to do without guests and yet to give them a kind welcome is its own praise."
[1451:] Having dried ourselves and changed our clothes, we rejoin the master of the house, who introduces us to his wife. She receives us not merely with courtesy but with kindness. Her glance rests on Emile. A mother, in her position, rarely receives a young man into her house without some anxiety or some curiosity at least.
[1452:] Supper is hurried forward on our account. When we go into the dining-room there were five places laid; we took our seats and the fifth chair remains empty. Presently a young girl enters, makes a deep courtesy, and modestly takes her place without a word. Emile is busy with his supper or considering how to reply to what was said to him; he bows to her and continus talking and eating. The main object of his journey is as far from his thoughts as he believes himself to be from the end of his journey. The conversation turns upon our losing our way. "Sir," says the master of the house to Emile, "you seem to be a pleasant well-behaved young gentleman, and that reminds me that your tutor and you arrived wet and weary like Telemachus and Mentor in the island of Calypso." "Indeed," said Emile, "we have found the hospitality of Calypso." His Mentor adds, "And the charms of Eucharis." But Emile knows the Odyssey and he has not read Telemachus, so he knows nothing of Eucharis. As for the young girl, I see her blushing up to her eyebrows, fixing her eyes on her plate, and hardly daring to breathe. Her mother, noticing her confusion, makes a sign to her father to turn the conversation. When he talks of his lonely life, he unconsciously begins to relate the circumstances which brought him into it; his misfortunes, his wife's fidelity, the consolations they found in their marriage, their quiet, peaceful life in their retirement, and all this without a word of the young girl. It is a pleasing and a touching story, which cannot fail to interest. Emile who is moved and melting with emotion, stops eating in order to listen. Finally at the place where this best of men expands with pleasure upon his attachment to the most worthy of wives, the young traveller, carried away by his feelings, stretches one hand to the husband, and taking the wife's hand with the other, kisses it rapturously and bathes it with his tears. Everybody is charmed with the simple enthusiasm of the young man. But the daughter, more deeply touched than the rest by this evidence of his kindly heart, is reminded of Telemachus weeping for the woes of Philoctetus. She looks at him shyly, the better to study his countenance; there is nothing in it to give the lie to her comparison. His easy bearing shows freedom without pride. His manners are lively but not boisterous; sympathy makes his glance softer and his expression more pleasing. The young girl, seeing him weep, is ready to mingle her tears with his. With so good an excuse for tears, she is restrained by a secret shame; she blames herself already for the tears which tremble on her eyelids, as though it were wrong to weep for one's family.
[1453:] Her mother, who has been watching her ever since she sat down to supper, sees her distress, and to relieve it she sends her on some errand. The daughter returns directly, but so little recovered that her distress is apparent to all. Her mother says gently, "Sophie, control yourself; will you never cease to weep for the misfortunes of your parents? Why should you, who are their chief comfort, be more sensitive than they are themselves?"
[1454:] At the name of Sophie you would have seen Emile give a start. His attention is arrested by this dear name, and he awakes all at once and looks eagerly at one who dares to bear it. Sophie! Are you the Sophie whom my heart is seeking? Is it you that I love? He looks at her; he watches her with a sort of fear and self-distrust. The face is not quite what he pictured; he cannot tell whether he likes it more or less. He studies every feature, he watches every movement, every gesture; he has a hundred fleeting interpretations for them all. He would give half his life if she would only speak. He looks at me anxiously and uneasily; his eyes are full of questions and reproaches. His every glance seems to say, "Guide me while there is yet time; if my heart yields itself and is deceived, I will never get over it."
[1455:] There is no one in the world less able to conceal his feelings than Emile. How should he conceal them, in the midst of the greatest disturbance he has ever experienced, and under the eyes of four spectators who are all watching him, while she who seems to heed him least is really most occupied with him? His uneasiness does not escape the keen eyes of Sophie; his own eyes tell her that she is its cause. She sees that this uneasiness is not yet love; what matter? He is thinking of her, and that is enough. She will be very unhappy if he thinks of her with impunity.
[1456:] Mothers, like daughters, have eyes; and they have experience too. Sophie's mother smiles at the success of our schemes. She reads the hearts of the young people; she sees that the time has come to secure the heart of this new Telemachus; she makes her daughter speak. Her daughter, with her native sweetness, replies in a timid tone which makes all the more impression. At the first sound of her voice, Emile surrenders. It is Sophie herself; there can be no doubt about it. If it were not so, it would be too late to deny it.
[1457:] The charms of this maiden enchantress rush like torrents through his heart, and he begins eagerly to quaff down the poison with which he is intoxicated. He says nothing; questions go unanswered; he sees only Sophie, he hears only Sophie. If she says a word, he opens his mouth; if her eyes are cast down, so are his; if he sees her sigh, he sighs too. It is Sophie's heart which seems to speak in his. What a change have these few moments wrought in her heart! It is no longer her turn to tremble, it is Emile's. Farewell liberty, simplicity, frankness. Confused, embarrassed, fearful, he dare not look about him for fear he should see that we are watching him. Ashamed that we should read his secret, he would like to make himself invisible to the whole world, that he might feed in secret on the sight of Sophie. Sophie, on the other hand, regains her confidence at the sight of Emile's fear; she sees her triumph and rejoices in it. "No'l mostra già, ben che in suo cor ne rida."Tasso. Jcrus. Del., c. iv. v. 33.
[1458:] Her expression remains unchanged; but in spite of her modest look and downcast eyes, her tender heart is throbbing with joy, and it tells her that she has found Telemachus.
[1459:] If I relate the plain and simple tale of their innocent affections you will accuse me of frivolity, but you will be mistaken. Sufficient attention is not given to the effect which the first connection between man and woman is bound to produce on the future life of both. People do not see that a first impression so vivid as that of love, or the liking which takes the place of love, produces lasting effects whose influence continues till death. Works on education are crammed with wordy and unnecessary accounts of the imaginary duties of children; but there is not a word about the most important and most difficult part of their education, the crisis which forms the bridge between the child and the man. If any part of this work is really useful, it will be because I have dwelt at great length on this matter, so essential in itself and so neglected by other authors, and because I have not allowed myself to be discouraged either by false delicacy or by the difficulties of expression. If I have said what needs to be done, I have said what should be said; it matters little to me to have written a romance. The story of human nature is a fair romance; if it is to be found in this book is it my fault? This should be the history of my species; you who have corrupted it are the ones who assume my book to be a romance.
[1460:] This is supported by another reason. We are not dealing with a youth given over from childhood to fear, greed, envy, pride, and all those passions which are the common tools of the schoolmaster, We have to do with a youth who is not only in love for the first time, but with one who is also experiencing his first passion of any kind. Very likely it will be the only strong passion he will ever know, and upon it depends the final formation of his character. His mode of thought, his feelings, his tastes, determined by a lasting passion, are about to become so fixed that they will be incapable of further change.
[1461:] You will easily understand that Emile and I do not spend the whole of the night which follows after such an evening in sleep. What? Should a wise man be so affected by a mere coincidence of name! Is there only one Sophie in the world? Are they all alike in heart and in name? Is every Sophie he meets his Sophie? Is he made to fall in love with a person of whom be knows so little, with whom he has scarcely exchanged a couple of words? Wait, young man; examine, observe. You do not even know who our hosts may be, and to hear you talk one would think the house was your own.
[1462:] This is no time for lessons, and lessons like these are not made to be listened to. They only serve to stimulate Emile to further interest in Sophie, through his desire to find reasons for his attraction. The unexpected coincidence in the name, the meeting which, so far as he knows, was quite accidental, my very caution itself, only serve as fuel to the fire. He is so convinced already of Sophie's excellence, that he feels sure he can make me fond of her.
[1463:] Next morning I have no doubt Emile will make himself as smart as his old travelling suit permits. I am not mistaken; but I am amused to see how eager he is to wear the clean shirts put out for us. I know his thoughts, and I am delighted to see that he is trying to establish a means of intercourse, through the return and exchange of the linen; so that he may have a right to return it and so pay another visit to the house.
[1464:] I expected to find Sophie rather more carefully dressed too; but I was mistaken. Such common coquetry is all very well for those who merely desire to please. The coquetry of true love is a more delicate matter; it has quite another end in view. Sophie is dressed, if possible, more simply than last night, though as usual with scrupulous cleanliness. The only sign of coquetry is her self-consciousness. She knows that elaborate attire sends a clear message, but she does not know that more informal drews sends a message of a different sort; it shows a desire to be liked not merely for one's clothes but for oneself. What does a lover care for her clothes if he knows she is thinking of him? Sophie is already sure of her power over Emile, and she is not content to delight his eyes if his heart is not hers also; he must not only perceive her charms, he must imagine them; has he not seen enough to guess the rest?
[1465:] We may take it for granted that while Emile and I were talking last night, Sophie and her mother were not silent. A confession was made and instructions given. The morning's meeting is not unprepared. Twelve hours ago our young people had never met; they have never said a word to each other; but it is clear that there is already an understanding between them. Their greeting is formal, confused, timid; they say nothing, their downcast eyes seem to avoid each other, but that is in itself a sign that they understand. They avoid each other with one consent; they already feel the need of concealment, though not a word has been uttered. When we depart we ask if we may come again to return the borrowed clothes in person. Emile's words are addressed to the father and mother, but his eyes seek Sophie's, and his looks are more eloquent than his words. Sophie says nothing by word or gesture; she seems deaf and blind, but she blushes, and that blush is an answer even plainer than that of her parents.
[1466:] We receive permission to come again, though we are not invited to stay. This is only fitting; you offer shelter to benighted travellers, but a lover does not sleep in the house of his mistress.
[1467:] We have hardly left the cherished house before Emile is thinking of taking rooms in the neighbourhood; the nearest cottage seems too far; he would like to sleep in the next ditch. "You young fool!" I say in a tone of pity, "are you already blinded by passion? Have you no regard for manners or for reason? Poor thing! You call yourself a lover and you would bring disgrace upon her you love! What would people say of her if they knew that a young man who has been staying at her house was sleeping close by? You say you love her! Would you ruin her reputation? Is that the price you offer for her parents' hospitality? Would you bring disgrace on her who will one day make you the happiest of men?" "Why should we be bothered by the empty words and unjust suspicions of other people?" he answers hotly. "Have you not taught me yourself to ignore them? Who knows better than I how greatly I honor Sophie, what respect I desire to show her? My attachment will not cause her shame, it will be her glory, it shall be worthy of her. If my heart and my actions continually give her the homage she deserves, what harm can I do her?" "Dear Emile," I say, as I clasp him to my heart, "you are thinking of yourself alone; learn to think for her too. Do not compare the honor of one sex with that of the other, they rest on different foundations. These foundations are equally firm and right, because they are both laid by nature, and that same virtue which makes you scorn what men say about yourself binds you to respect what they say of her you love. Your honor is in your own keeping, her honor depends on others. To neglect it is to wound your own honor, and you fail in what is due to yourself if you do not give her the respect she deserves."
[1468:] Then while I explain the reasons for this difference, I make him realise how wrong it would be to pay no attention to it. Who can say if he will really be Sophie's husband? He does not know how she feels towards him; her own heart or her parents' will may already have formed other engagements; he knows nothing of her, perhaps there are none of those grounds of suitability which make a happy marriage. Is he not aware that the least breath of scandal with regard to a young girl is an indelible stain, which not even marriage with him who has caused the scandal can efface? What man of feeling would ruin the woman he loves? What man of honor would desire that a miserable woman should for ever lament the misfortune of having found favour in his eyes?
[1469:] Always prone to extremes, the youth takes alarm at the consequences which I have compelled him to consider, and now he thinks that he cannot be too far from Sophie's home. He quickens his steps to get further from it; he glances round to make sure that no one is listening; he would sacrifice his own happiness a thousand times to the honour of her whom he loves; he would rather never see her again than cause her the least unpleasantness. This is the first result of the pains I have taken ever since he was a child to make him capable of affection.
[1470:] We must therefore seek a lodging at a distance, but not too far. We look about us, we make inquiries; we find that there is a town at least six miles away. We try and find lodgings in this town rather than in the nearer villages where our presence might give rise to suspicion. It is there that the new lover takes up his abode, full of love, hope, joy, above all full of right feeling. In this way, I guide his rising passion towards all that is honourable and good, so that his inclinations unconsciously follow the same bent.
[1471:] My course is drawing to a close; the end is in view. All the chief difficulties are vanquished, the chief obstacles overcome; the hardest thing left to do is to refrain from spoiling my work by undue haste to complete it. Amid the uncertainty of human life, let us shun that false prudence which seeks to sacrifice the present to the future; what is, is too often sacrificed to what will never be. Let us make man happy at every age in case in spite of our care he should die without knowing the meaning of happiness. Now if there is a time to enjoy life, it is undoubtedly the close of adolescence, when the powers of mind and body have reached their greatest strength, and when man in the midst of his course is furthest from those two extremes which tell him "Life is short." If the imprudence of youth deceives itself it is not in its desire for enjoyment but because it seeks enjoyment where it is not to be found, and lays up misery for the future, while unable to enjoy the present.
[1472:] Consider my Emile over twenty years of age, well formed, well developed in mind and body, strong, healthy, active, skillful, robust, full of sense, reason, kindness, humanity, possessed of good morals and good taste, loving what is beautiful, doing what is good, free from the sway of fierce passions, released from the tyranny of popular prejudices, but subject to the law of wisdom, and easily guided by the voice of a friend; gifted with so many useful and pleasant accomplishments, caring little for wealth, able to earn a living with his own hands, and not afraid of want, whatever may come. Here he is now in the intoxication of a growing passion; his heart opens to the first beams of love. Its sweet illusions give him a whole universe of delight and enjoyment; he loves a lovable object, whose character is even more lovable than her person. He hopes, he expects the reward which he deserves.
[1473:] It is the rapport of their hearts, the correspondence of honest sentiments, that forms the basis of their first attachment. This attachment ought to be lasting. It abandons itself, with confidence, with reason, to the most delightful madness, without fear, regret, remorse, or any other disturbing thought, but that which is inseparable from all happiness. What can it be lacking? Look, inquire, imagine what still is lacking and that can be combined with present joys. Every happiness which can exist in combination is already present; nothing could be added without taking away from what there is. He is as happy as man can be. Will I choose this time to cut short so sweet a period? Will I disturb such pure enjoyment? The happiness he enjoys is my life's reward. What could I give that could outweigh what I should take away? Even if I set the crown to his happiness I should destroy its greatest charm. That supreme joy is a hundredfold greater in anticipation than in possession; its savor is greater while we wait for it than when it is ours. 0 worthy Emile! love and be loved! Prolong your enjoyment before it is yours; rejoice in your love and in your innocence, find your paradise upon earth, while you await your heaven. I will not cut short this happy period of life. I will draw out its enchantments, I will prolong them as far as possible. Alas! it must come to an end and that soon; but it will at least linger in your memory, and you will never repent of its joys.
[1474:] Emile has not forgotten that we have something to return. As soon as the things are ready, we take horses and set off at a great pace, for on this occasion he is anxious to get there. When the heart opens the door to passion, it becomes conscious of the slow flight of time. If my time has not been wasted he will not spend his life like this.
[1475:] Unluckily the road is intricate and the country difficult. We lose our way; he is the first to notice it, and without losing his temper, and without grumbling, he devotes his whole attention to discovering the path. He wanders for a long time before he knows where he is and always with the same self-control. You think nothing of that; but I think it a matter of great importance, for I know how eager he is; I see the results of the care I have taken from his infancy to harden him to endure the blows of necessity.
[1476:] We finally arrive. Our reception is much simpler and more friendly than on the previous occasion; we are already old acquaintances. Emile and Sophie bow shyly and say nothing; what can they say in our presence? What they wish to say requires no spectators. We walk in the garden; a well-kept vegetable garden takes the place of flowerbeds, the park is an orchard full of fine tall fruit trees of every kind divided by pretty streams and borders full of flowers. "What a lovely place!" exclaims Emile, still thinking of his Homer, and still full of enthusiasm, "I could imagine myself in the garden of Alcinous." The daughter wishes she knew who Alcinous was; her mother asks. "Alcinous," I tell them, "was a king of Corcyra. Homer describes his garden and the critics think it too simple and unadorned.
[Note 12] This Alcinous had a charming daughter who dreamed the night before her father received a stranger at his board that she would soon have a husband." Sophie, taken unawares, blushes, hangs her head, and bites her lips; no one can be more confused. Her father, who is enjoying her confusion, adds that the young princess went herself to wash the linen in the river. "Do you think," says he, "she would have scorned to touch the dirty clothes, saying, that they smelt of grease?" Sophie, touched to the quick, forgets her natural timidity and defends herself eagerly. Her papa knew very well that all the smaller things would have had no other laundress if she had been allowed to wash them, and that she would gladly have done more had she been set to do it.
[Note 13] Meanwhile she watches me secretly with such anxiety that I can not suppress a smile, while I read the terrors of her simple heart which urges her to speak. Her father is cruel enough to continue this foolish sport by asking her, in jest, why she spoke on her own behalf and what she has in common with the daughter of Alcinous. Trembling and ashamed, she dares hardly breathe or look at us. Charming girl! This is no time for feigning, you have shown your true feelings in spite of yourself.
[1477:] To all appearance this little scene is soon forgotten. Luckily for Sophie, Emile, at least, is unaware of it. We continue our walk, the young people at first keeping close beside us; but they find it hard to adapt themselves to our slower pace, and presently they are a little in front of us, they are walking side by side, they begin to talk, and before long they are a good way ahead. Sophie seems to be listening quietly. Emile is talking and gesticulating vigorously; they seem to find their conversation interesting. When we turn homewards a full hour later, we call them to us and they return slowly enough now, and we can see they are making good use of their time. Their conversation ceases suddenly before they come within earshot, and they hurry up to us. Emile meets us with a frank affectionate expression; his eyes are sparkling with joy; yet he looks anxiously at Sophie's mother to see how she takes it. Sophie is not nearly so much at her ease; as she approaches us she seems covered with confusion at finding herself tête-à-tête with a young man, though she has met so many other young men frankly enough, and without being found fault with for it. She runs up to her mother, somewhat out of breath, and makes some trivial remark, as if to pretend she had been with her for some time.
[1478:] From the happy expression of these dear children we see that this conversation has taken a load off their hearts. They are no less reticent in their intercourse, but their reticence is less embarrassing. It is only due to Emile's reverence and Sophie's modesty, to the goodness of both. Emile ventures to say a few words to her, she ventures to reply, but she always looks at her mother be fore she dares to answer. The most remarkable change is in her attitude towards me. She shows me the greatest respect, she watches me with interest, she takes pains to please me. I see that I am honored with her esteem, and that she is not indifferent to mine. I understand that Emile has been talking to her about me; you might say they have been scheming to win me over to their side. Yet it is not so, and Sophie herself is not so easily won. Perhaps Emile will have more need of my influence with her than of hers with me. What a charming pair! When I consider that the tender love of my young friend has brought my name so prominently into his first conversation with his beloved, I enjoy the reward of all my trouble. His affection is a sufficient recompense.
[1479:] Our visit is repeated. There are frequent conversations between the young people. Emile is madly in love and thinks that his happiness is within his grasp. Yet he does not succeed in winning any formal avowal from Sophie; she listens to what he says and answers nothing. Emile knows how modest she is, and is not surprised at her reticence; he feels sure that she likes him; he knows that parents decide whom their daughters shall marry; he supposes that Sophie is awaiting her parents' commands; he asks her permission to speak to them, and she makes no objection. He talks to me and I speak on his behalf and in his presence. He is immensely surprised to hear that Sophie is her own mistress, that his happiness depends on her alone. He begins to be puzzled by her conduct. He is less self-confident, he takes alarm, he sees that he has not made so much progress as he expected, and then it is that his love appeals to her in the tenderest and most moving language.
[1480:] Emile is not the sort of man to guess what is the matter. If no one told him he would never discover it as long as he lived, and Sophie is too proud to tell him. What she considers obstacles, others would call advantages. She has not forgotten her parents' teaching. She is poor; Emile is rich; so much she knows. He must win her esteem; his deserts must be great indeed to remove this inequality. But how should he perceive these obstacles? Is Emile aware that he is rich? Has he ever condescended to inquire? Thank heaven, he has no need of riches, he can do good without their aid. The good he does comes from his heart, not his purse. He gives the wretched his time, his care, his affection, himself; and when he reckons up what he has done, he hardly dares to mention the money spent on the poor.
[1481:] Since he does not know what to make of his disgrace, he thinks it is his own fault; for who would venture to accuse the adored one of caprice? The shame of humiliation adds to the pangs of disappointed love. He no longer approaches Sophie with that pleasant confidence of his own worth; he is shy and timid in her presence. He no longer hopes to win her affections, but to gain her pity. Sometimes he loses patience and is almost angry with her. Sophie seems to guess his angry feelings and she looks at him. Her glance is enough to disarm and terrify him; he is more submissive than he used to be.
[1482:] Disturbed by this stubborn resistance, this invincible silence, he pours out his heart to his friend. He shares with him the pangs of a heart devoured by sorrow; he implores his help and counsel. "How mysterious it is, how hard to understand! She takes an interest in me, that I am sure; far from avoiding me she is pleased to see me; when I come she shows signs of pleasure, when I go she shows regret; she receives my attentions kindly, my services seem to give her pleasure, she condescends to give me her advice and even her commands. Yet she rejects my requests and my prayers. When I dare speak of marriage, she tells me to be quiet; if I say a word, she leaves me at once. Why on earth should she wish me to be hers but refuse to be mine? She respects and loves you, and she will not dare to refuse to listen to you. Speak to her, make her answer. Come to your friend's help, and put a crown on your work; do not let him fall a victim to your care! If you fail to secure his happiness, your own teaching will have been the cause of his misery."
[1483:] I speak to Sophie, and have no difficulty in getting her to confide her secret to me, a secret which was known to me already. It is not so easy to get permission to tell Emile; but at last she gives me leave and I tell him what is the matter. He cannot get over his surprise at this explanation. He cannot understand this delicacy; he cannot see how a few thousands more or less can affect his character or his merrit. When I get him to see their effect on people's prejudices he begins to laugh; he is so wild with delight that he wants to be off at once to tear up his title deeds and renounce his money, so as to have the honour of being as poor as Sophie, and to return worthy to be her husband.
[1484:] "Why," I say, trying to stop him, and laughing in my turn at his impetuosity, "will this young head never grow any older? Having dabbled all your life in philosophy, will you never learn to reason? Do not you see that your wild scheme would only make things worse, and Sophie more obstinate? It is a small superiority to be rather richer than she, but to give up all for her would be a very great superiority. If her pride cannot bear to be under the small obligation, how will she make up her mind to the greater? If she cannot bear to think that her husband might taunt her with the fact that he has enriched her, would she permit him to blame her for having brought him to poverty? Poor boy, beware that she not suspect you of such a plan! On the contrary, be careful and economical for her sake, so that she not accuse you of trying to gain her by cunning, by sacrificing of your own free will what you are really wasting through carelessness.
[1485:] "Do you really think that she is afraid of wealth, and that she is opposed to great possessions in themselves? No, dear Emile; there are more serious and substantial grounds for her opinion, in the effect produced by wealth on its possessor. She knows that those who are possessed of fortune's gifts are apt to place them first. The rich always put wealth before merit. When services are reckoned against silver, the latter always outweighs the former, and those who have spent their life in their master's service are considered his debtors for the very bread they eat. What must you do, Emile, to calm her fears? Let her get to know you better; that is not done in a day. Show her the treasures of your heart to counterbalance the wealth which is unfortunately yours. Time and constancy will overcome her resistance; let your great and noble feelings make her forget your wealth. Love her, serve her, serve her worthy parents. Convince her that these attentions are not the result of a foolish fleeting passion, but of settled principles engraved upon your heart. Show them the honour deserved by worth when exposed to the buffets of Fortune; that is the only way to reconcile it with that worth which basks in her smiles."
[1486:] The transports of joy experienced by the young man at these words may easily be imagined; they restore confidence and hope. His good heart rejoices to do something to please Sophie which he would have done if there had been no such person, or if he had not been in love with her. However little his character has been understood, anybody can see how he would behave under such circumstances.
[1487:] Here am I, the confidant of these two young people and the mediator of their affection. What a fine task for a tutor! So fine that never in all my life have I stood so high in my own eyes, nor felt so pleased with myself. Moreover, this duty is not without its charms. I am not unwelcome in the home; it is my business to see that the lovers behave themselves. Emile, ever afraid of offending me, was never so docile. The little lady herself overwhelms me with a kindness which does not deceive me, and of which I only take my proper share. This is her way of making up for her severity towards Emile. For his sake she bestows on me a hundred tender caresses, though she would die rather than bestow them on him; and he, knowing that I would never stand in his way, is delighted that I should get on so well with her. If she refuses his arm when we are out walking, he consoles himself with the thought that she has taken mine. He makes way for me without a murmur. He clasps my hand, and his voice and look both whisper, "My friend, speak for me!" and his eyes follow us with interest. He tries to read our feelings in our faces and to interpret our conversation by our gestures; he knows that everything we are saying concerns him. Dear Sophie, how frank and easy you are when you can talk to Mentor without being overheard by Telemachus. How freely and delightfully you permit him to read what is passing in your tender little heart! How delighted you are to show him how you esteem his pupil! How cunningly and appealingly you allow him to guess still tenderer sentiments. With what a pretence of anger you dismiss Emile when his impatience leads him to interrupt you! With what pretty vexation you reproach his indiscretion when he comes and prevents you saying something to his credit, or listening to what I say about him, or finding in my words some new excuse to love him!
[1488:] Having got so far as to be tolerated as an acknowledged lover, Emile takes full advantage of his position. He speaks, he urges, he implores, he demands. Hard words or ill treatment make no difference, provided he gets a hearing. At length Sophie is persuaded, though with some difficulty, to assume the authority of a betrothed, to decide what he shall do, to command instead of to ask, to accept instead of to thank, to control the frequency and the hours of his visits, to forbid him to come till such a day or to stay beyond such an hour. This is not done in play, but in earnest, and if it was hard to induce her to accept these rights, she uses them so sternly that Emile is often ready to regret that he gave them to her. But whatever her commands, they are obeyed without question, and often when at her bidding he is about to leave her, he glances at me his eyes full of delight, as if to say, "You see she has taken possession of me." Yet unknown to him, Sophie, with all her pride, is observing him closely, and she is smiling to herself at the pride of her slave.
[1489:] Oh that I had the brush of an Alban or a Raphael to paint their bliss, or the pen of the divine Milton to describe the pleasures of love and innocence! Not so; let such hollow arts shrink back before the sacred truth of nature. In tenderness and pureness of heart let your imagination freely trace the raptures of these young lovers, who under the eyes of parents and tutor, abandon themselves to their blissful illusions. In the intoxication of passion they are advancing step by step to its consummation; with flowers and garlands they are weaving the bonds which are to bind them till death do part. I am carried away by this succession of pictures, I am so happy that I cannot group them in any sort of order or scheme. Any one with a heart in his breast can paint the charming picture for himself and realise the different experiences of father, mother, daughter, tutor, and pupil, and the part played by each and all in the union of the most delightful couple whom love and virtue have ever led to happiness.
[1490:] Now that he is really eager to please, Emile begins to feel the value of the accomplishments he has acquired. Sophie is fond of singing, he sings with her; he does more, he teaches her music. She is lively and light of foot, she loves skipping; he dances with her, he perfects and develops her untrained movements into the steps of the dance. These lessons, enlivened by the gayest mirth, are quite delightful, they melt the timid respect of love. A lover may enjoy teaching his betrothed -- he has a right to be her teacher.
[1491:] There is an old spinet quite out of order. Emile mends and tunes it; he is a maker and mender of musical instruments as well as a carpenter; it has always been his rule to learn to do everything he can for himself. The house is picturesquely situated and he makes several sketches of it, in some of which Sophie does her share, and she hangs them in her father's study. The frames are not gilded, nor do they require gilding. When she sees Emile drawing, she draws too, and improves her own drawing; she cultivates all her talents, and her grace gives a charm to all she does. Her father and mother recall the days of their wealth when they find themselves surrounded by the works of art which alone gave value to wealth. The whole house is adorned by love; love alone has enthroned among them, without cost or effort, the very same pleasures which were gathered together in former days by dint of toil and money.
[1492:] As the idolater gives what he loves best to the shrine of the object of his worship, so the lover is not content to see perfection in his mistress; he must be ever trying to add to her adornment. She does not need it for his pleasure; it is he who needs the pleasure of giving, it is a fresh homage to be rendered to her, a fresh pleasure in the joy of beholding her. Everything of beauty seems to find its place only as an accessory to the supreme beauty. It is both touching and amusing to see Emile eager to teach Sophie everything he knows, without asking whether she wants to learn it or whether it is suitable for her. He talks about all sorts of things and explains them to her with boyish eagerness. He thinks he has only to speak and she will understand; he looks forward to arguing, and discussing philosophy with her. Everything he cannot display before her is so much useless learning; he is quite ashamed of knowing more than she.
[1493:] So he gives her lessons in philosophy, physics, mathematics, history, and everything else. Sophie is delighted to share his enthusiasm and to try and profit by it. How pleased Emile is when he can get leave to give these lessons on his knees before her! He thinks the heavens are open. Yet this position, more trying to pupil than to teacher, is hardly favourable to study. It is not easy to know where to look, to avoid meeting the eyes which follow our own, and if they meet so much the worse for the lesson.
[1494:] Women are no strangers to the art of thinking, but they should only skim the surface of logic and metaphysics. Sophie understands readily, but she soon forgets. She makes most progress in the moral sciences and æsthetics; as to physical science she retains some vague idea of the general laws and order of this world. Sometimes in the course of their walks, the spectacle of the wonders of nature bids them not fear to raise their pure and innocent hearts to nature's God; they are not afraid of His presence, and they pour out their hearts before him.
[1495:] What! Two young lovers spending their time together talking of religion! Have they nothing better to do than to say their catechism! What profit is there in the attempt to degrade what is noble? Yes, no doubt they are saying their catechism in their delightful land of romance; they are perfect in each other's eyes; they love one another, they talk eagerly of all that makes virtue worth having. Their sacrifices to virtue make it all the dearer to them. Their struggles for self-control draw from them tears purer than the dew of heaven, and these sweet tears are the joy of life; no human heart has ever experienced a sweeter intoxication. Their very renunciation adds to their happiness, and their sacrifices increase their self-respect. Sensual men, bodies without souls, some day they will know your pleasures, and all their life long they will recall with regret the happy days when they refused the cup of pleasure.
[1496:] In spite of this good understanding, differences and even quarrels occur from time to time. The lady has her whims, the lover has a hot temper; but these passing showers are soon over and only serve to strengthen their union. Emile learns by experience not to attach too much importance to them, he always gains more by the reconciliation than he lost by the quarrel. The results of the first difference made him expect a like result from all; he was mistaken, but even if he does not make any appreciable step forward, he has always the satisfaction of finding Sophie's genuine concern for his affection more firmly established. "What advantage is this to him?" you would ask. I will gladly tell you all the more gladly because it will give me an opportunity to establish clearly a very important principle, and to combat a very deadly one.
[1497:] Emile is in love, but he is not presuming; and you will easily understand that the dignified Sophie is not the sort of girl to allow any kind of familiarity. Yet virtue has its limits like everything else, and she is rather to be blamed for her severity than for indulgence; even her father himself is sometimes afraid lest her lofty pride should degenerate into a haughty spirit. When most alone, Emile dares not ask for the slightest favour, he must not even seem to desire it; and if she is gracious enough to take his arm when they are out walking, a favour which she will never permit him to claim as a right, it is only occasionally that he dares with a sigh to press her hand to his heart. However, after a long period of self-restraint, he ventures secretly to kiss the hem of her dress, and several times he is lucky enough to find her willing at least to pretend she was not aware of it. One day he attempts to take the same privilege rather more openly, and Sophie takes it into her head to be greatly offended. He persists, she gets angry and speaks sharply to him; Emile will not put up with this without reply; the rest of the day is given over to sulks, and they part in a very ill temper.
[1498:] Sophie is ill at ease; her mother is her confidant in all things, how can she keep this from her? It is their first misunderstanding, and the misunderstanding of an hour is such a serious business. She is sorry for what she has done; she gets her mother's permission and her father's commands to make reparation.
[1499:] The next day Emile returns somewhat earlier than usual and in a state of some anxiety. Sophie is in her mother's dressing-room and her father is also present. Emile enters respectfully but gloomily. Scarcely have her parents greeted him than Sophie turns round and holding out her hand asks him in an affectionate tone how he is. That pretty hand is clearly held out to be kissed; he takes it but does not kiss it. Sophie, rather ashamed of herself, withdraws her hand as best she may. Emile, who is not used to a woman's whims, and does not know how far caprice may be carried, does not forget so easily or make friends again all at once. Sophie's father, seeing her confusion, completes her discomfiture by his jokes. The poor girl, confused and ashamed, does not know what to do with herself and would gladly have a good cry. The more she tries to control herself the worse she feels; at last a tear escapes in spite of all she can do to prevent it. Emile, seeing this tear, rushes towards her, falls on his knees, takes her hand and kisses it again and again with the greatest devotion. "My word, you are too kind to her," says her father, laughing; "if I were you, I should deal more severely with these follies, I should punish the mouth that wronged me." Emboldened by these words, Emile turns a suppliant eye towards the mother, and thinking she is not unwilling, he tremblingly approaches Sophie's face; she turns away her head, and to save her mouth she exposes a rosey cheek. The daring young man is not content with this; he is feebly resisted. What a kiss, if it were not taken under her mother's eyes. Severe Sophie watch yourself: one will often ask to kiss your dress on the condition that you sometimes refuse.
[1500:] After this exemplary punishment, Sophie's father goes about his business, and her mother makes some excuse for sending her out of the room; then she speaks to Emile very seriously.
[1501:] "Sir," she says, "I think a young man so well born and well bred as yourself, a man of feeling and character, would never reward with dishonour the confidence reposed in him by the friendship of this family. I am neither prudish nor over strict; I know how to make excuses for youthful folly, and what I have permitted in my own presence is sufficient proof of this. Consult your friend as to your own duty; he will tell you there is all the difference in the world between the playful kisses sanctioned by the presence of father and mother, and the same freedom taken in their absence and in betrayal of their confidence, a freedom which makes a snare of the very favors which in the parents' presence were wholly innocent. He will tell you, sir, that my daughter is only to blame for not having perceived from the first what she ought never to have permitted; he will tell you that every favor, taken as such, is a favor, and that it is unworthy of a man of honor to take advantage of a young girl's innocence, to usurp in private the same freedom which she may permit in the presence of others. For good manners teach us what is permitted in public; but we do not know what a man will permit to himself in private if he makes himself the sole judge of his conduct."
[1502:] After this well-deserved rebuke, addressed rather to me than to my pupil, the good mother leaves us, and I am amazed by her rare prudence, in thinking it a little thing that Emile should kiss her daughter's lips in her presence while fearing that he should venture to kiss her dress when they are alone. When I consider the folly of worldly maxims, whereby real purity is continually sacrificed to a show of propriety, I understand why speech becomes more refined while the heart becomes more corrupt, and why etiquette is stricter while those who conform to it are most immoral.
[1503:] While I am trying to convince Emile's heart with regard to these duties which I ought to have instilled into him sooner, a new idea occurs to me, an idea which perhaps does Sophie all the more credit, though I will take care not to tell her lover. This so-called pride, for which she has been censured, is clearly only a very wise precaution to protect her from herself. Being aware that, unfortunately, her own temperament is inflammable, she dreads the least spark, and keeps out of reach so far as she can. Her sternness is due not to pride but to humility. She assumes a control over Emile because she doubts her control of herself; she turns the one against the other. If she had more confidence in herself she would be much less haughty. With this exception is there anywhere on earth a gentler, sweeter girl? Is there any who endures an affront with greater patience, any who is more afraid of annoying others? Is there any with less pretension, except in the matter of virtue? Moreover, she is not proud of her virtue, she is only proud in order to preserve her virtue, and if she can follow the guidance of her heart without danger, she caresses her lover himself. But her wise mother does not confide all this even to her father; men should not hear everything.
[1504:] Far from seeming proud of her conquest, Sophie has grown more friendly and less exacting towards everybody, except perhaps the one person who has wrought this change. Her noble heart no longer swells with the feeling of independence. She triumphs modestly over a victory gained at the price of her freedom. Her bearing is more restrained, her speech more timid, since she has begun to blush at the word "lover." But contentment may be seen beneath her outward confusion and this very shame is not painful. This change is most noticeable in her behavior towards the young men she meets. Now that she has ceased to be afraid of them, much of her extreme reserve has disappeared. Now that her choice is made, she does not hesitate to be gracious to those to whom she is quite indifferent. Taking no more interest in them, she is less difficult to please, and she always finds them pleasant enough for people who are of no importance to her.
[1505:] If true love were capable of coquetry, I should fancy I saw traces of it in the way Sophie behaves towards other young men in her lover's presence. One would say that not content with the ardent passion she inspires by a mixture of shyness and caresses, she is not sorry to rouse this passion by a little anxiety; one would say that when she is purposely amusing her young guests she means to torment Emile by the charms of a freedom she will not allow herself with him. But Sophie is too considerate, too kindly, too wise to really torment him. Love and honor take the place of prudence and control the use of this dangerous weapon. She can alarm and reassure him just as he needs it; and if she sometimes makes him uneasy she never really gives him pain. The anxiety she causes to her beloved may be forgiven because of her fear that he is not sufficiently her own.
[1506:] But what effect will this little performance have upon Emile? Will he be jealous or not? That is what we must discover; for such digressions form part of the purpose of my book, and they do not lead me far from my main subject.
[1507:] I have already shown how this passion of jealousy in matters of convention finds its way into the heart of man. In love it is another matter; then jealousy is so near akin to nature, that it is hard to believe that it is not her work; and the example even of animals, many of whom are madly jealous, seems to prove this point beyond reply. Is it man's influence that has taught cocks to tear each other to pieces or bulls to fight to the death?
[1508:] No one can deny that the aversion to everything which may disturb or interfere with our pleasures is a natural impulse. Up to a certain point the desire for the exclusive possession of that which ministers to our pleasure is in the same case. But when this desire has become a passion, when it is transformed into madness, or into a bitter and suspicious fancy known as jealousy, that is quite another matter; such a passion may be natural or it may not; we must distinguish between these different cases.
[1509:] I have already analysed the example of the animal world in my Discourse on Inequality, and on further consideration I think I may refer my readers to that analysis as sufficiently thorough. I will only add this further point to those already made in that work, that the jealousy which springs from nature depends greatly on sexual power, and that when sexual power is or appears to be boundless, that jealousy is at its height. For then the male, measuring his rights by his needs, can never see another male except as an unwelcome rival. In such species the females always submit to the first comer; they only belong to the male by right of conquest, and they are the cause of unending strife.
[1510:] Among the monogamous species, where intercourse seems to give rise to some sort of moral bond, a kind of marriage, the female who belongs by choice to the male on whom she has bestowed herself usually denies herself to all others; and the male, having this preference of affection as a pledge of her fidelity, is less uneasy at the sight of other males and lives more peaceably with them. Among these species the male shares the care of the little ones; and by one of those touching laws of nature it seems as if the female rewards the father for his love for his children.
[1511:] Now consider the human species in its primitive simplicity. It is easy to see, from the limited powers of the male and the moderation of his desires, that nature meant him to be content with one female. This is confirmed by the numerical equality of the two sexes, at any rate in our part of the world, an equality which does not exist in anything like the same degree among those species in which several females are collected around one male. Though a man does not brood like a pigeon, and though he has no milk to suckle the young and must in this respect be classed with the quadrupeds, his children are feeble and helpless for so long a time that mother and children could ill dispense with the father's affection and the care which results from it.
[1512:] All these observations combine to prove that the jealous fury of the males of certain animals proves nothing with regard to man; and the exceptional case of those southern regions were polygamy is the established custom only confirms the rule, since it is the plurality of wives that gives rise to the tyrannical precautions of the husband, and the consciousness of his own weakness makes the man resort to constraint to evade the laws of nature.
[1513:] Among ourselves where these same laws are less frequently evaded in this respect, but are more frequently evaded in another and even more detestable manner, jealousy finds its motives in the passions of society rather than in those of primitive instinct. In most irregular connections the hatred of the lover for his rivals far exceeds his love for his mistress. If he fears a rival in her affections it is the effect of that amour-propre whose origin I have already traced out, and he is moved by vanity rather than love. Moreover, our clumsy systems of education have made women so deceitful,
[Note 14] and have so over-stimulated their appetites, that you cannot rely even on the most clearly proved affection; they can no longer display a preference which secures you against the fear of a rival.
[1514:] True love is another matter. I have shown, in the work already referred to, that this sentiment is not so natural as men think, and that there is a great difference between the gentle habit which binds a man with cords of love to his helpmeet, and the unbridled passion which is intoxicated by the fancied charms of an object which he no longer sees in its true light. This passion which is full of exclusions and preferences, only differs from vanity in this respect, that vanity demands all and gives nothing, so that it is always harmful, while love, bestowing as much as it demands, is in itself a sentiment full of equity. Moreover, the more exacting it is, the more credulous; that very illusion which gave rise to it, makes it easy to persuade. If love is suspicious, esteem is trustful; and love will never exist in an honest heart without esteem, for every one loves in another the qualities which he himself holds in honor.
[1515:] When once this is clearly understood, we can predict with confidence the kind of jealousy which Emile will be capable of experiencing. Since there is only the smallest germ of this passion in the human heart, the form it takes must depend solely upon education.
[1516:] Emile, full of love and jealousy, will not be angry, sullen, suspicious, but delicate, sensitive, and timid. He will be more alarmed than vexed; he will think more of securing his beloved than of threatening his rival; he will treat him as an obstacle to be removed if possible from his path, rather than as a rival to be hated. If he hates him, it is not because he presumes to compete with him for Sophie's affection, but because Emile feels that there is a real danger of losing that affection. He will not be so unjust and foolish as to take offence at the rivalry itself; he understands that the law of preference rests upon merit only, and that honour depends upon success; he will redouble his efforts to make himself acceptable, and he will probably succeed. His generous Sophie, though she has given alarm to his love, is well able to allay that fear, to atone for it; and the rivals who were only suffered to put him to the proof are speedily dismissed.
[1517:] But where do I find myself uncounsciously going? 0h Emile! what have you become? Can I recognize my former pupil? How low you seem to have fallen! Where is that young man so firmly made, who braved all weathers, who devoted his body to the hardest tasks and his soul to the laws of wisdom, was untouched by prejudice or passion, loved only truth, was swayed by only by reason, was dependent on nothing that was not his own? Living in softness and idleness he now lets himself be ruled by women. Their amusements are the business of his life, their wishes are his laws. A young girl is the arbiter of his fate; he cringes and grovels before her. The solemn Emile is now the plaything of a child!
[1518:] So shift the scenes of life. Each age is swayed by its own motives, but the man is the same. At ten his mind was set upon cake, at twenty it is set upon his beloved; at thirty it will be set upon pleasure; at forty on ambition, at fifty on avarice. When will he seek only after wisdom? Happy is he who is is led to it in spite of himself! What matter who is the guide, so long as it leads him to his goal? Heroes and sages have themselves paid tribute to this human weakness; and those who handled the distaff with clumsy fingers were none the less great men.
[1519:] If you want to prolong the influence of a good education through life itself, the good habits acquired in childhood must be carried forward into adolescence, and when your pupil is what he ought to be you must manage to keep him what he ought to be. This is the last perfection left for you to give to your work. This is why it is above all important that the tutor should remain with young men; otherwise there is little doubt they will learn to make love without him. The great mistake of tutors and still more of fathers is to think that one way of living makes another impossible, and that as soon as the child is grown up you must abandon everything you used to do when he was little. If that were so, why should we take such pains in childhood, since the good or bad use we make of it will vanish with childhood itself, as if another way of life were necessarily accompanied by other ways of thinking?
[1520:] The stream of memory is only interrupted by great illnesses, and the stream of conduct, by great passions. Our tastes and inclinations may change, but this change, though it may be sudden enough, is rendered less abrupt by our habits. The skilful artist with good degradations of colors contrives to mingle and blend his tints so that the transitions are imperceptible; and certain color washes are spread over the whole picture so that there may be no sudden breaks. The same rule is confirmed by experience. Those who lack modertion are always changing their affections, their tastes, their sentiments; the only constant factor is the habit of change. But the well-regulated man always returns to his former habits and preserves to old age the tastes and the pleasures of his childhood.
[1521:] If you contrive that young people passing from one stage of life to another do not despise what has gone before, that when they form new habits they do not forsake the old, and that they always love to do what is right in things new and old, then only can your work be saved and you can be sure of your students as long as they live. For the revolution most to be feared is that of the age over which you are now watching. As men always look back to this period with regret so the tastes carried forward into it from childhood are not easily destroyed; but if once interrupted they are never resumed.
[1522:] Most of the habits you think you have instilled into children and young people are not really habits at all. They have only been acquired under compulsion, and being followed reluctantly they will be cast off at the first opportunity. However long you remain in prison you never get a taste for prison life; so aversion is increased rather than diminished by habit. Not so with Emile. As a child he only did what he could do willingly and with pleasure, and as a man he will do the same, and the force of habit will only lend its help to the joys of freedom. An active life, bodily labour, exercise, movement, have become so essential to him that he could not relinquish them without suffering. Reduce him all at once to a soft and sedentary life and you condemn him to chains and imprisonment, you keep him in a condition of violence and constraint; he would suffer, no doubt, both in health and temper. He can scarcely breathe in a stuffy room; he requires open air, movement, work. Even at Sophie's feet he cannot help casting a glance at the country and longing to explore it in her company. Yet he remains if he must. But he is anxious and ill at ease; he seems to be struggling with himself; he remains because he is a captive. "Yes," you will say, "these are necessities to which you have subjected him, the constraints which you have laid upon him." You speak truly, I have subjected him to the condition of manhood.
[1523:] Emile loves Sophie; but what were the charms by which he was first attracted? Sensibility, virtue, and love for things pure and honest. When he loves this love in Sophie, will he cease to feel it himself? And what price did she put upon herself? She required all her lover's natural feelings - esteem of what is really good, frugality, simplicity, generous unselfishness, a scorn for pomp and riches. These virtues were Emile's before love claimed them of him. Is he really changed? He has all the more reason to be himself; that is the only difference. The careful reader will not suppose that all the circumstances in which he is placed are the work of chance. There were many charming girls in the city; is it chance that his choice is discovered in a distant retreat? Is their meeting the work of chance? Is it chance that makes them so suited to each other? Is it chance that they cannot live in the same place, that he is compelled to find a lodging so far from her? Is it chance that he can see her so seldom and must purchase the pleasure of seeing her at the price of such fatigue? You say he is becoming effeminate. Not at all; he is growing stronger. He must be fairly robust to stand the fatigue he endures on Sophie's account.
[1524:] He lives more than six miles away. That distance serves to temper the shafts of love. If they lived next door to each other, or if he could drive to see her in a comfortable carriage, he would love at his ease in the Paris fashion. Would Leander have braved death for the sake of Hero if the sea had not lain between them? Reader, spare me more words; if you are made to hear me you will be able to follow out my principles in my details.
[1525:] The first time we went to see Sophie we went on horseback, so as to get there more quickly. We continue this convenient plan until our fifth visit. We were expected; and more than half a league from the house we see people on the road. Emile watches them, his pulse quickens as he gets nearer, he recognises Sophie and dismounts quickly; he hurries to join the charming family. Emile is fond of good horses; this horse is fresh, and as soon as Emile has turned his back the horse feels he is free and gallops off across the fields. I follow and with some difficulty I succeed in catching him and bringing him back. Unluckily Sophie is afraid of horses, and I dare not approach her. Emile has not seen what happened, but Sophie whispers to him that he is giving his friend a great deal of trouble. He hurries up quite ashamed of himself, takes the horses, and follows after the party. It is only fair that each should take his turn and he rides on to get rid of our mounts. He has to leave Sophie behind him, and he no longer thinks riding a convenient mode of travelling. He returns out of breath and meets us half-way.
[1526:] The next time, Emile will not hear of horses. "Why not?" I say, "we need only take a servant to look after them." "Do you want to put our worthy friends to such trouble?" he replies. "You see they would insist on feeding man and horse." "That is true," I reply; "their's is the generous hospitality of the poor. The rich man in his niggardly pride only welcomes his friends, but the poor find room for their friends' horses." "Let us go on foot," he says; "Don't you have the strength to walk, you who are always so ready to share the toilsome pleasures of your child?" "I will gladly go with you," I reply at once, "and it seems to me that love does not desire so much show."
[1527:] As we draw near, we meet the mother and daughter even further from home than on the last occasion. We have come at a great pace. Emile is very warm; his beloved condescends to pass her handkerchief over his cheeks. It would take a good many horses to make us ride there after this.
[1528:] But it is rather hard never to be able to spend an evening together. Midsummer is long past and the days are growing shorter. Whatever we say, we are not allowed to return home in the dark, and unless we make a very early start, we have to go back almost as soon as we get there. The mother is sorry for us and uneasy on our account, and it occurs to her that, though it would not be proper for us to stay in the house, beds might be found for us in the village, if we liked to stay there occasionally. Emile claps his hands at this idea and trembles with joy; Sophie, unwittingly, kisses her mother rather oftener than usual on the day this idea occurs to her.
[1529:] Little by little the charm of friendship and the familiarity of innocence take root and grow among us. I generally accompany my young friend on the days appointed by Sophie or her mother, but sometimes I let him go alone. The heart thrives in the sunshine of confidence, and a man must not be treated as a child; and what have I accomplished so far, if my pupil is unworthy of my esteem? Now and then I go without him; he is sorry, but he does not complain; what use would it be? And then he knows I shall not interfere with his interests. However, whether we go together or separately you will understand that we are not stopped by the weather; we are only too proud to arrive in a condition which calls for pity. Unluckily Sophie deprives us of this honour and forbids us to come in bad weather. This is the only occasion on which she rebels against the rules which I laid down for her in private.
[1530:] One day Emile had gone alone and I did not expect him back till the following day, but he returned the same evening. "My dear Emile," said I, "have you come back to your old friend already?" But instead of responding to my caresses he replied with some show of temper, "You need not suppose that I came back so soon of my own accord. She insisted on it; is for her sake not yours that I am here." Touched by his frankness I renewed my caresses, saying, "Truthful heart and faithful friend, do not conceal from me anything I ought to know. If you came back for her sake, you told me so for my own; your return is her doing, your frankness is mine. Continue to preserve the noble candour of great souls; strangers may think what they will, but it is a crime to let our friends think us better than we are."
[1531:] I take care not to let him underrate the cost of his confession by assuming that there is more love than generosity in it, and by telling him that he would rather deprive himself of the honor of this return than give it to Sophie. But this is how he revealed to me, all unconsciously, what were his real feelings; if he had returned slowly and comfortably, dreaming of his sweetheart, I should know he was merely her lover; when he hurried back, even if he was a little out of temper, he was the friend of his Mentor.
[1532:] You see that the young man is very far from spending his days with Sophie and seeing as much of her as he wants. One or two visits a week are all that is permitted, and these visits are often only for the afternoon and are rarely extended to the next day. He spends much more of his time in longing to see her, or in rejoicing that he has seen her, than he actually spends in her presence. Even when he goes to see her, more time is spent in going and returning than by her side. His pleasures -- genuine, pure, delicious, but more imaginary than real -- serve to kindle his love but not to make his heart effeminate.
[1533:] On the days when he does not see Sophie he is not sitting idle at home. He is Emile himself and quite unchanged. Most often he runs around the surrounding countryside pursuing its natural history. He observes and studies the soil, its products, and their mode of cultivation. He compares the methods he sees with those with which he is already familiar; he tries to find the reasons for any differences. If he thinks other methods better than those of the locality, he introduces them to the farmers' notice. If he suggests a better kind of plough, he has one made from his own drawings; if he finds a lime pit he teaches them how to use the lime on the land, a process new to them. He often lends a hand himself. They are surprised to find him handling all manner of tools more easily than they can themselves. His furrows are deeper and straighter than theirs, he is a more skilful sower, and his beds for early produce are more cleverly planned. They do not scoff at him as a fine talker; they see he knows what he is talking about. In a word, his zeal and attention are bestowed on everything that is really useful to everybody. Nor does he stop there. He visits the peasants in their homes; inquires into their circumstances, their families, the number of their children, the extent of their holdings, the nature of their produce, their markets, their rights, their burdens, their debts, etc. He gives away very little money, for he knows it is usually ill spent; but he himself directs the use of his money, and makes it helpful to them without distributing it among them. He supplies them with labourers, and often pays them for work done by themselves, on tasks for their own benefit. For one he has the falling thatch repaired or renewed; for another he clears a piece of land which had gone out of cultivation for lack of means; to another he gives a cow, a horse, or stock of any kind to replace a loss. Two neighbours are ready to go to law, he wins them over, and makes them friends again. A peasant falls ill; he has him cared for, he looks after him himself.
[Note 15] Another is harassed by a rich and powerful neighbour; he protects him and speaks on his behalf. Young people are fond of one another; he helps forward their marriage. A good woman has lost her beloved child; he goes to see her, he speaks words of comfort and sits a while with her. He does not despise the poor; he is in no hurry to avoid the unfortunate; he often takes his dinner with some peasant he is helping; and he will even accept a meal from those who have no need of his help. Though he is the benefactor of some and the friend of all, he is none the less their equal. In conclusion, he always does as much good by his personal efforts as by his money.
[1534:] Sometimes his steps are turned in the direction of the happy home. He may hope to see Sophie without her knowing, to see her out walking without being seen. But Emile is always quite open in everything he does; he neither can nor would deceive. His delicacy is of that pleasing type in which pride rests on the foundation of a good conscience. He keeps strictly within bounds, and never comes near enough to gain from chance what he only desires to win from Sophie herself. On the other hand, he delights to roam about the neighbourhood, looking for the trace of Sophie's steps, feeling what pains she has taken and what a distance she has walked to please him. The day before his visit, he will go to some neighbouring farm and order a little feast for the next day. We will take our walk in that direction without any special object; we will turn in apparently by chance. Fruit, cake, and cream are waiting for us. Sophie likes sweets, so is not insensible to these attentions, and she is quite ready to do honor to what we have provided. And I always get my share of the credit even if I have had no part in the trouble; it is a girl's way of returning thanks more easily. Her father and I have cake and wine; Emile keeps the ladies company and is always on the look-out to secure a dish of cream in which Sophie has dipped her spoon.
[1535:] The cake leads me to talk of the races Emile used to run. Every one wants to hear about them. I explain amid much laughter; they ask him if he can run as well as ever. "Better," he says; "I would be sorry to forget how to run." One member of the company is dying to see him run, but she dare not say so; some one else undertakes to suggest it; he agrees and we send for two or three young men of the neighbourhood. A prize is offered, and in imitation of our earlier games a piece of cake is placed on the goal. Every one is ready. Sophie's father gives the signal by clapping his hands. The nimble Emile flies like lightning and reaches the goal almost before the others have started. He receives his prize at Sophie's hands, and no less generous than Æneas, he gives gifts to all the vanquished.
[1536:] In the midst of his triumph, Sophie dares to challenge the victor and to assert that she can run as fast as he. He does not refuse to enter the lists with her, and while she is getting ready to start, while she is tucking up her skirt at each side, more eager to show Emile a pretty ankle than to beat him in the race, while she is seeing if her petticoats are short enough, he whispers a word to her mother who smiles and nods approval. Then he takes his place by his competitor; no sooner is the signal given than she is off like a bird.
[1537:] Women were not meant to run; they flee that they may be overtaken. Running is not the only thing they do awkwardly, but it is the only thing they do gracelessly; their elbows glued to their sides and pointed backwards look ridiculous, and the high heels on which they are perched make them look like so many grasshoppers trying to run instead of to jump.
[1538:] Emile, supposing that Sophie runs no better than other women, does not deign to stir from his place and watches her start with a smile of mockery. But Sophie is light of foot and she wears low heels; she needs no pretence to make her foot look smaller. She runs so quickly that he has only just time to overtake this new Atalanta when he sees her far ahead. Then he starts like an eagle dashing upon its prey. He pursues her, clutches her, grasps her at last quite out of breath, and gently placing his left arm about her, lifts her like a feather, and pressing his sweet burden to his heart, finishes the race, makes her touch the goal first, and then exclaiming, "Sophie wins!" he sinks on one knee before her and admits to have been vanquished.
[1539:] Along with such occupations there is also the trade we learned. One day a week at least, and every day when the weather is too bad for country pursuits, Emile and I go to work under a master-joiner. We do not work for show, like people above our trade; we work in earnest like regular workmen. Once when Sophie's father came to see us, he found us at work, and did not fail to report his wonder to his wife and daughter. "Go and see that young man in the workshop," he said, "and you will soon see if he despises the condition of the poor." You may imagine how pleased Sophie was at this! They talk it over, and they decide to surprise him at his work. They question me, apparently without any special object, and having made sure of the time, mother and daughter take a little carriage and come to town on that very day.
[1540:] On her arrival, Sophie sees, at the other end of the shop, a young man in his shirt sleeves, with his hair all messy, so hard at work that he does not see her. She makes a sign to her mother. Emile, a chisel in one hand and a hammer in the other, is just finishing a mortise. Then he saws a piece of wood and places it in the vice in order to polish it. The sight of this does not set Sophie laughing. It affects her greatly; it wins her respect. Woman, honor your chieftain; he it is who works for you; it is he who is your bread-winner. Here is the man.
[1541:] While they are attentively observing him, I watch them and touch Emile on the sleeve. He turns around, drops his tools, and hurries to them with an exclamation of joy. After this initial rush of emotion he makes them take a seat and he goes back to his work. But Sophie cannot keep quiet; she gets up quickly, runs about the workshop, looks at the tools, feels the polish of the boards, picks up shavings, looks at our hands, and says she likes this trade, it is so clean. The lively girl tries to copy Emile. With her delicate white hand she passes a plane over a bit of wood; the plane slips and makes no impression. It seems to me that Love himself is hovering over us and beating his wings; I think I can hear his joyous cries, "Hercules is avenged."
[1542:] Yet Sophie's mother questions the master of the shop. "Sir, how much do you pay these two men a day?" "I give them each ten cents a day and their food; but if that young fellow wanted he could earn much more, for he is the best workman in the countryside." "Ten cents a day and their food," said she looking at us tenderly. "That is so, madam," replied the master. At these words she runs to Emile, kisses him, and tearfully presses him to her breast. Unable to say more she repeats again and again, "My son, my son!"
[1543:] When they have spent some time chatting with us, without interrupting our work, the mother says to her daughter, "We must be going now. It is getting late and we must not keep your father waiting." Then approaching Emile she taps him playfully on the cheek, saying, "Well, my good workman, won't you come with us?" He replies sadly, "I am in the middle of a project; ask the master." The master is asked if he can spare us. He replies that he cannot. "I have work to be done," he says, "which is wanted the day after to-morrow, so there is not much time. Counting on these gentlemen I refused other workmen who came; if they fail me I don't know how to replace them and I won't be able to deliver the work on the day it was promised." The mother says nothing; she is waiting to hear what Emile will say. Emile hangs his head and is quiet. "Sir," she says, somewhat surprised at this, "have you nothing to say to that?" Emile looked tenderly at her daughter and merely said, "You can see that I have to stay." Then the ladies leave us. Emile accompanies them to the door, gazes after them as long as they are in sight, sighs, and returns to his work without a word.
[1544:] On the way home the mother somewhat vexed at his conduct, speaks to her daughter of the strange way in which he behaved. "Why," she says, "was it so difficult to satisfy the master without being obliged to stay? The young man is generous enough and ready to spend money when there is no need for it, why couldn't he spend a little on such a fitting occasion?" "Oh, mamma," replies Sophie, " I trust Emile will never rely so much on money as to use it to break an engagement, to fail to keep his own word, and to make another break his! I know he could easily compensate the master to make up for the slight inconvenience caused by his absence. But his soul would become the slave of riches, he would become accustomed to place wealth before duty, and he would think that any duty might be neglected provided he was ready to pay. That is not Emile's way of thinking, and I hope he will never change on my account. Do you think it cost him nothing to stay? You are quite wrong, mamma; it was for my sake that he stayed; I saw it in his eyes."
[1545:] It is not that Sophie is indifferent to genuine proofs of love. On the contrary she is imperious and exacting; she would rather not be loved at all than be loved half-heartedly. Hers is the noble pride of worth, conscious of its own value, self-respecting and claiming a similar honor from others. She would scorn a heart that did not recognise the full worth of her own, that did not love her for her virtues as much and more than for her charms, a heart which did not put duty first, and prefer it to everything. She did not desire a lover who knew no will but hers. She wished to reign over a man whom she had not spoilt. Thus Circe, having changed into swine the comrades of Ulysses, bestowed herself on him over whom she had no power.
[1546:] Except for this sacred and inviolable right, Sophie is very jealous of her own rights. She observes how carefully Emile respects them, how zealously he does her will, how cleverly he guesses her wishes, how exactly he arrives at the appointed time. She will have him neither late nor early; he must arrive at the moment. To come early is to think more of himself than of her; to come late is to neglect her. To neglect Sophie -- that could not happen twice. Once an unfounded suspicion on her part nearly ruins everything, but Sophie is really just and knows how to atone for her faults.
[1547:] They are expecting us one evening; Emile had received his orders. They come to meet us, but we are not there. What has become of us? What accident have we met with? No message from us! The evening is spent in expectation of our arrival. Sophie thinks we are dead; she is miserable and in an agony of distress; she spends the whole night crying. In the course of the evening a messenger is despatched to inquire after us and bring back news in the morning. The messenger returns together with another messenger sent by us, who makes our excuses verbally and says we are quite well. Then the scene is changed; Sophie dries her tears, or if she still weeps it is for anger. It is small consolation to her proud spirit to know that we are alive; Emile lives and he has kept her waiting.
[1548:] When we arrive she tries to escape to her own room. Her parents desire her to remain, so she is obliged to do so; but deciding at once what course she will take she assumes a calm and contented expression which would deceive most people. Her father comes forward to receive us saying, "You have made your friends very uneasy; there are people here who will not forgive you very readily." "Who are they, papa," says Sophie with the most gracious smile she can assume. "What business is that of yours," says her father, "if it is not you?" Sophie bends over her work without reply. Her mother receives us coldly and formally. Emile is so confused he dares not speak to Sophie. She speaks first, inquires how he is, asks him to take a chair, and pretends so cleverly that the poor young fellow, who still knew nothing of the language of angry passions, is quite deceived by her apparent indifference, and ready to take offence on his own account.
[1549:] To undeceive him I am about to take Sophie's hand and raise it to my lips as I sometimes do; she draws it back so forcefully, with the word, "Sir," uttered in such a strange manner that Emile's eyes are opened at once by this involuntary movement.
[1550:] Sophie herself, seeing that she has betrayed herself, exercises less control over herself. Her apparent indifference is succeeded by scornful irony. She replies to everything he says in monosyllables uttered slowly and hesitatingly as if she were afraid her anger should show itself too plainly. Emile half dead with terror stares at her full of sorrow and tries to get her to look at him so that his eyes might read in hers her real feelings. Sophie, still more angry at his boldness, gives him one look which removes all wish for another. Luckily for himself, Emile, trembling and dumbfounded, dares neither look at her nor speak to her again; for even though he is not guilty, were he able to endure her wrath she would never forgive him.
[1551:] Seeing that it is my turn now, and that the time is ripe for explanation, I return to Sophie. I take her hand and this time she does not snatch it away; she is ready to faint. I say gently, "Dear Sophy, we are the victims of misfortune. But you are just and reasonable; you will not judge us unheard. Listen to what we have to say." She says nothing and I proceed.
[1552:] "We set out yesterday at four o'clock. We were told to be here at seven, and we always allow ourselves a little more time than we need so as to rest a little before we get here. We were more than half way here when we heard terrible groans coming from a little valley in the hillside, some distance off. We hurried towards the place and found an unlucky peasant who, returning from town somewhat drunk, had fallen so heavily off of his horse that he had broken his leg. We shouted and called for help; there was no answer. We tried to lift the injured man on his horse but without success; the least movement caused terrible pain. We decided to tie up the horse in a quiet part of the wood. Then we made a chair of our crossed arms and carried the man as gently as possible, following his directions till we got him home. The way was long and we were constantly obliged to stop and rest. At last we got there, but we were thoroughly exhausted. We were surprised and sorry to find that it was a house we knew already and that the wretched creature we had carried with such difficulty was the same man who received us so kindly when we had first arrived. We had all been so upset that until that moment we had not recognised each other.
[1553:] "He had two little children; his wife was about to present him with a third. She was so overwhelmed at the sight of his condition that she began to feel sharp pains and a few hours later started to give birth. What was to be done under such circumstances in a lonely cottage far from any help? Emile decided to go get the horse we had left in the weod, to ride as fast as he could into the town and look for a surgeon. He let the surgeon have the horse, and not succeeding in finding a nurse right away, he returned on foot with a servant, after having sent a messenger to you. Meanwhile you can imagine that between a man with a broken leg and a woman in labor I hardly knew what to do, but I got ready as well as I could such things in the house as I thought would be needed for the relief of both.
[1554:] "I will pass over the rest of the details; they are not to the point. It was two o'clock in the morning before we got a moment's rest. At last we returned before daybreak to our lodging nearby, where we waited till you were up to give you an account of our accident."
[1555:] That is all I say. But before any one can speak Emile, approaching Sophie, raises his voice and says with greater firmness than I expected, "Sophie, you are the arbiter of my fate, as you very well know. You may make me to die of grief; but do not hope to make me forget the rights of humanity; they are even more sacred to me than your own rights; I will never renounce them for you."
[1556:] For all answer, Sophie rises, puts her arm round his neck, and kisses him on the cheek; then offering him her hand with inimitable grace she says to him, "Emile, take this hand; it is yours. When you will, you shall be my husband and my master; I will try to be worthy of that honour."
[1557:] Scarcely has she kissed him when her delighted father clapps his hands calling, "Encore, encore," and Sophie without further ado, kisses him twice on the other cheek. But almost at the same moment, afraid of what she has done, she takes refuge in her mother's arms and hides her blushing face on the maternal bosom.
[1558:] I will not describe our happiness; everybody should feel it. After dinner Sophie asks if it is too far to go and see the poor invalids. It is her wish and it is a work of mercy. When we get there we find them both in bed -- Emile had sent for a second bedstead; there are people there to look after them -- Emile has seen to that too. But in spite of this everything is in such disorder that they suffer almost as much from discomfort as from their condition. Sophie asks for one of the good wife's aprons and sets to work to make her more comfortable in her bed; then she does as much for the man; her soft and gentle hand seems to find out what is hurting them and how to settle them into less painful positions. Her very presence seems to make them more comfortable; she seems to guess what is the matter. This fastidious girl is not disgusted by the dirt or smells, and she manages to get rid of both without disturbing the sick people. She who has always appeared so modest and sometimes so disdainful, she who would not for all the world have touched a man's bed with her little finger, lifts the sick man and changes his linen without any fuss, and places him to rest in a more comfortable position. The zeal of charity is of more value than modesty. What she does is done so skilfully and with such a light touch that he feels better almost without knowing she has touched him. Husband and wife mingle their blessings upon the kindly girl who tends, pities, and consoles them. She is an angel from heaven come to visit them; she is an angel in face and manner, in gentleness and goodness. Emile is greatly touched by all this and he watches her without speaking. 0 man, love thy companion. God gave her to relieve thy sufferings, to comfort thee in thy troubles. This is woman.
[1559:] The new-born baby is baptised. The two lovers are its god-parents, and as they hold it at the font they long, at the bottom of their hearts, for the time when they will have a child of their own to be baptised. They long for their wedding day; they think it is close at hand; all Sophie's scruples have vanished, but mine remain. They are not yet where they think they are; every one must have his turn.
[1560:] One morning when they have not seen each other for two whole days, I enter Emile's room with a letter in my hands, and looking fixedly at him I say to him, "What would you do if some one told you Sophie were dead?" He utters a loud cry, gets up and strikes his hands together, and without saying a single word, he looks at me with eyes of desperation. "Answer me," I continue with the same calmness. Vexed at my composure, he then approaches me with eyes blazing with anger; and checking himself in an almost threatenning attitude, "What would I do? I do not know; but this I do know, I would never set eyes again upon the person who. brought me such news." "Comfort yourself," I say, smiling, "she lives, she is well, and they are expecting us this evening. But let us go for a short walk and we can talk things over."
[1561:] The passion which engrosses him will no longer permit him to devote himself as in former days to discussions of pure reason; this very passion must be called to our aid if his attention is to be given to my teaching. That is why I made use of this terrible preface; I am quite sure he will listen to me now.
[1562:] "We must be happy, dear Emile. It is the aim of every feeling creature; it is the first desire taught us by nature, and the only one which never leaves us. But where is happiness? Who knows? Every one seeks it, and no one finds it. We spend our lives in the search and we die before the end is attained. My young friend, when I took you, a new-born infant, in my arms, and called God himself to witness to the vow I dared to make that I would devote my life to the happiness of your life, did I know myself what I was undertaking? No; I only knew that in making you happy, I was sure of my own happiness. By making this useful inquiry on your account, I made it for us both.
[1563:] "So long as we do not know what to do, wisdom consists in doing nothing. Of all rules there is none so greatly needed by man, and none which he is less able to obey. In seeking happiness when we do not know where it is, we are perhaps getting further and further from it; we are running as many risks as there are roads to choose from. But it is not every one that can keep still. Our passion for our own well-being makes us so uneasy that we would rather deceive ourselves in the search for happiness than sit still and do nothing; and when once we have left the place where we might have known happiness, we can never return.
[1564:] "In ignorance like this I tried to avoid a similar fault. When I took charge of you I decided to take no useless steps and to prevent you from doing so too. I kept to the path of nature, until she should show me the path of happiness. It turned out that their paths were the same, and without knowing it this was the path I followed.
[1565:] "Be at once my witness and my judge; I will never refuse to accept your decision. Your early years have not been sacrificed to those that were to follow, you have enjoyed all the good gifts which nature bestowed upon you. Of the ills to which you were by nature subject, and from which I could shelter you, you have only experienced such as would harden you to bear others. You have never suffered any evil, except to escape a greater one. You have known neither hatred nor servitude. Free and happy, you have remained just and kindly; for suffering and vice are inseparable, and no man ever became bad until he was unhappy. May the memory of your childhood remain with you to old age! I am not afraid that your kind heart will ever recall the hand that trained it without a blessing upon it.
[1566:] "When you reached the age of reason, I secured you from the influence of human prejudice; when your heart awoke I preserved you from the sway of passion. Had I been able to prolong this inner tranquility till your life's end, my work would have been insecure, and you would have been as happy as man can be. But, my dear Emile, it was in vain that I dipped your soul in the waters of Styx, for I could not make you completely invulnerable. A fresh enemy has appeared, whom you have not yet learnt to conquer, and from whom I cannot save you. That enemy is yourself. Nature and fortune had left you free. You could face poverty, you could bear bodily pain; the sufferings of the heart were unknown to you; you were then dependent on nothing but your position as a human being. Now you depend on all the ties you have formed for yourself; you have learnt to desire, and you are now the slave of your desires. Without any change in yourself, without any insult, any injury to yourself, what sorrows may attack your soul, what pains may you suffer without sickness, how many deaths may you die and yet live! A lie, an error, a suspicion, may plunge you in despair.
[1567:] "At the theatre you used to see heroes abandoned to depths of woe, making the stage re-echo with their wild cries, lamenting like women, weeping like children, and thus securing the applause of the audience. Do you remember how shocked you were by those lamentations, cries, and groans, in men from whom one would only expect deeds of constancy and heroism. 'What? you said, 'are those the patterns we are to follow, the models set for our imitation! Are they afraid man will not be small enough, unhappy enough, weak enough, if his weakness is not enshrined under a false show of virtue?' My young friend, from now on you must be more merciful to the stage; you have become one of those heroes.
[1568:] "You know how to suffer and to die; you know how to bear the heavy yoke of necessity in the ills of the body, but you have not yet learned to give a law to the desires of your heart; and the difficulties of life arise rather from our affections than from our needs. Our desires are vast, our strength is hardly better than nothing. In his wishes man is dependent on many things; in himself he is dependent on nothing, not even on his own life. The more his connections are multiplied, the greater his sufferings. Everything upon earth has an end; sooner or later all that we love escapes from our fingers, and we behave as if it would last for ever. What was your terror at the mere suspicion of Sophie's death? Do you suppose she will live for ever? Do not young people of her age die? She must die, my son, and perhaps before you. Who knows if she is alive at this moment? Nature meant you to die only once; you have prepared a second death for yourself.
[1569:] "Thus subservient to your ungoverned passions, how pitiful you will be! Forever in the grip of deprivation, losses, fears -- you will not even enjoy what is left. You will possess nothing because of the fear of losing it. From wanting to follow only your passions you will never be able to satisfy them. You will forever be seeking repose but it will always vanish before you. You will be miserable and you will become wicked. How can you be otherwise, having no care but your unbridled desires? If you cannot put up with involuntary deprivations how will you voluntarily deprive yourself? How can you sacrifice desire to duty and resist your heart in order to listen to your reason? You would never see that man again who dared to bring you word of the death of your mistress; how would you behold him who would deprive you of her living self, him who would dare to tell you, 'She is dead to you; virtue puts a gulf between you'? If you must live with her whatever happens, whether Sophie is married or single, whether you are free or not, whether she loves or hates you, whether she is given or refused to you, no matter, it is your will and you must have her at any price. Tell me then what crime will stop a man who has no law but his heart's desires, who knows not how to resist his own passions?
[1570:] "My child, there is no happiness without courage nor virtue without a struggle. The word virtue is derived from a word signifying strength, and strength is the foundation of all virtue. Virtue is the heritage of a creature weak by nature but strong by will; that is the whole merit of the righteous man; and though we call God good we do not call Him virtuous, because He does good without effort. I waited to explain the meaning of this word, so often profaned, until you were ready to understand me. As long as virtue is quite easy to practise, there is little need to know it. This need arises with the awakening of the passions; your time has come.
[1571:] "When I brought you up in all the simplicity of nature, instead of preaching disagreeable duties I secured for you immunity from the vices which make such duties disagreeable. I made lying not so much hateful as unnecessary in your sight; I taught you not so much to give others their due as to care little about your own rights. I made you kindly rather than virtuous. But the kindly man is only kind so long as he finds it pleasant. Kindness falls to pieces with the shock of human passions; the kindly man is only kind to himself.
[1572:] "What is meant by a virtuous man? He who can conquer his affections. For then he follows his reason, his conscience; he does his duty; he is his own master and nothing can turn him from the right way. So far you have had only the semblance of liberty, the precarious liberty of the slave who has not received his orders. Now is the time for real freedom; learn to be your own master; control your heart, my Emile, and you will be virtuous.
[1573:] "There is another apprenticeship before you, an apprenticeship more difficult than the former. For nature delivers us from the evils she lays upon us, or else she teaches us to submit to them. But she has no message for us with regard to our self-imposed evils; she leaves us to ourselves; she leaves us, victims of our own passions, to succumb to our vain sorrows, to pride ourselves on the tears of which we should be ashamed.
[1574:] "This is your first passion. Perhaps it is the only passion worthy of you. If you can control it like a man, it will be the last; you will be master of all the rest, and you will obey nothing but the passion for virtue.
[1575:] "There is nothing criminal in this passion, that I know. It is as pure as the hearts which experience it. It was born of honor and nursed by innocence. Happy lovers! For you the charms of virtue only add to those of love; and the blessed union to which you are looking forward is less the reward of your goodness than of your affection. But tell me, my sincere young man, though this passion is pure, are you any the less subjected to it? Have you been made less its slave? And if to-morrow it should cease to be innocent, would you stifle it right away? Now is the time to try out your strength; there is no time for that in hours of danger. Such dangerous tests should be made when peril is at a distance. We do not practise the use of our weapons when we are face to face with the enemy; we do that before the war; we come to the battle-field already prepared.
[1576:] "It is a mistake to distinguish between permitted and forbidden passions, so as to yield to the one and refuse the other. All passions are good if we are their masters; all are bad if we abandon ourselves to them. What nature forbids us is to extend our relations beyond the limits of our strength; reason forbids us to want what we cannot get; conscience forbids us not to be tempted but to yield to temptation. To feel or not to feel a passion is beyond our control, but we can control ourselves. Every sentiment that we can control is legitimate; those which control us are criminal. A man is not guilty if he loves his neighbour's wife as long as he keeps this unhappy passion bound by the law of duty; he is guilty if he loves his own wife so greatly as to sacrifice everything to that love.
[1577:] "Do not expect me to supply you with lengthy precepts of morality. I have only one rule to give you which sums up all the rest. Be a man; restrain your heart within the limits of your manhood. Study and know these limits. However narrow they may be, we are not unhappy within them. It is only when we wish to go beyond them that we are unhappy, only when, in our mad passions, we try to attain the impossible. We are unhappy when we forget our manhood to make an imaginary world for ourselves, from which we are always slipping back into our own. The only good things, whose loss really affects us, are those which we claim as our rights. If it is clear that we cannot obtain what we want, our mind turns away from it; wishes without hope cease to torture us. A beggar is not tormented by a desire to be a king; a king only wishes to be a god when he thinks himself more than man.
[1578:] "The illusions of pride are the source of our greatest ills; but the contemplation of human suffering keeps the wise humble. He keeps to his proper place and makes no attempt to depart from it; he does not waste his strength in getting what he cannot keep; and his whole strength being devoted to the right employment of what he has, he is in reality richer and more powerf in proprtion as he desires less than we. A mortal and perishable being, would I create eternal ties to this earth, where everything changes and disappears, and from where I myself will shortly vanish! Oh, Emile! my son! if I were to lose you, what would be left of myself? And yet I must learn to lose you, for who knows when you may be taken from me?
[1579:] "Do you wish to live in wisdom and happiness? Then attach your heart only to beauty that is eternal. Let your desires be limited by your position, let your duties take precedence over your wishes; extend the law of necessity into the region of morals; learn to lose what may be taken from you; learn to forsake all things at the command of virtue, to set yourself above the chances of life, to detach your heart before it is torn in pieces, to be brave in adversity so that you may never be wretched, to be steadfast in duty that you may never be guilty of a crime. Then you will be happy in spite of fortune, and good in spite of your passions. You will find a pleasure that cannot be destroyed, even in the possession of the most fragile things. You will possess them, they will not possess you, and you will realise that the man from whom everything escapes only enjoys what he knows how to lose. It is true you will not enjoy the illusions of imaginary pleasures; neither will you feel the sufferings which are their result. You will profit greatly by this exchange, for the sufferings are real and frequent, the pleasures are rare and empty. Victor over so many deceitful ideas, you will also vanquish the idea that attaches such an excessive value to life. You will spend your life in peace, and you will leave it without terror; you will detach yourself from life as from other things. Let others, horror-struck, believe that when this life is ended they cease to be. Conscious of the nothingness of life, you will think that you are only entering upon the true life. To the wicked, death is the close of life; to the just it is its beginning."
[1580:] Emile hears me with attention not unmixed with anxiety. After such a startling preface he feared some gloomy conclusion. He foresees that when I show him how necessary it is to practise the strength of the soul, I desire to subject him to this stern discipline; and like a wounded man who shrinks from the surgeon, he believes he already feels the painful but healing touch which will cure the deadly wound.
[1581:] Uncertain, anxious, eager to know what I am coming to, he does not answer but questions me timidly. "What do I need to do?" he says almost trembling, not daring to raise his eyes. "What do you need to do? "I reply firmly. "You must leave Sophie." "What are you saying? "he exclaimes angrily. "Leave Sophie, leave Sophie, deceive her, become a traitor, a villain, a perjurer?" "What," I continue, interrupting him; "does Emile suppose I shall teach him to deserve such names?" "No," he continued with the same vigour. "Neither you nor any one else. In spite of you I am capable of preserving your work. I will not deserve such reproaches.'
[1582:] I am prepared for this first outburst; I let it pass, unmoved. If I did not have the moderation I preach there would not be much use preaching it! Emile knows me too well to believe me capable of demanding any wrong action from him, and he knows that it would be wrong to leave Sophie in the sense he attaches to the phrase. So he waits for an explanation. Then I resume my speech.
[1583:] "My dear Emile, do you think any man whatsoever can be happier than you have been for the last three months? If you think so, undeceive yourself. Before tasting the pleasures of life you have plumbed the depths of its happiness. There is nothing more than you have already experienced. The joys of sense are transitory; habit invariably destroys them. You have tasted greater joys through hope than you will ever enjoy in reality. The imagination which adorns what we long for disappears with its possession. With the exception of the one self-existing Being, there is nothing beautiful except that which is not. If that state could have lasted for ever, you would have found perfect happiness. But all that is related to man shares his decline; all is finite, all is fleeting in human life, and even if the conditions which make us happy could be prolonged for ever, habit would deprive us of all taste for that happiness. If nothing outside of us changes, the heart changes; either happiness leaves us, or we we leave it.
[1584:] "During your infatuation time has passed unnoticed. Summer is over, winter is approaching. Even if our expeditions were possible, at such a time of year they would not be permitted. Whether we wish it or not, we will have to change our way of life; it cannot continue. I read in your eager eyes that this does not disturb you greatly; Sophie's confession and your own wishes suggest a simple plan for avoiding the snow and escaping the journey. The plan has its advantages, no doubt; but when spring returns, the snow will melt and the marriage will remain. You must plan for all seasons.
[1585:] "You wish to marry Sophie and you have only known her five months! You wish to marry her, not because she is a suitable wife for you but because she pleases you; as if love were never mistaken as to suitability, as if those who begin with love never ended with hatred! I know she is virtuous; but is that enough? Is fitness merely a matter of honor? It is not her virtue I misdoubt, it is her disposition. Does a woman show her real character in a day? Do you know how often you must have seen her and under what varying conditions to really know her temper? Is four months of attachment a sufficient pledge for the rest of your life? Perhaps two months of absence will make you forget her; as soon as you are gone another man may erase your image in her heart. On your return you may find her as indifferent as you have found her affectionate until now. Sentiments are not a matter of principle; she may be perfectly virtuous and yet cease to love you. I am inclined to think she will be faithful and true; but who will answer for her, and who will answer for you if you are not put to the proof? Will you postpone this trial till it is too late, will you wait to know your true selves till parting is no longer possible?
[1586:] "Sophie is not eighteen, and you are barely twenty-two; this is the age for love, but not for marriage. What a father and mother for a family! If you want to know how to bring up children, you should at least wait till you yourselves are children no longer. Do you not know that too early motherhood has weakened the constitution, destroyed the health, and shortened the life of many young women? Do you not know that many children have always been weak and sickly because their mother was little more than a child herself? When mother and child are both growing, the strength required for their growth is divided, and neither gets all that nature intended; are not both certain to suffer? Either I know very little of Emile, or he would rather wait and have a healthy wife and children than satisfy his impatience at the price of their life and health.
[1587:] "Let us speak of yourself. You hope to be a husband and a father; have you seriously considered your duties? By becoming the head of a family you will become a member of the state. And what is a citizen of the state; do you know? You have studied your duties as a man, but what do you know of the duties of a citizen? Do you know the meaning of such terms as government, laws, country? Do you know the price you must pay for life, and for what you must be prepared to die? You think you know everything, when you still really know nothing. Before taking your place in the civil order, learn to perceive and know what position will suit you.
[1588:] "Emile, you must leave Sophie. I do not say that you must give her up; if you were capable of such conduct, she would be only too happy not to have married you. You must leave her in order to return worthy of her. Do not be vain enough to think yourself already worthy. How much remains to be done! Come and fulfil this noble task; come and learn to submit to absence; come and earn the prize of fidelity, so that when you return you may indeed deserve some honor and may ask her hand not as a favor but as a reward."
[1589:] Not yet accustomed to struggling with himself, untrained to desire one thing and to will another, the young man will not surrender. He resists, he argues. Why should he refuse the happiness which awaits him? Would not waiting to accept the hand that is offered to him be to disdain it? Why need he leave her to learn what he ought to know? And if it were necessary to leave her why not leave her as his wife with a certain pledge of his return? Let him be her husband, and he is ready to follow me; let them be married and he will leave her without fear. "Marry her in order to leave her, dear Emile! what a contradiction! A lover who can leave his beloved shows himself capable of great things; a husband should never leave his wife unless through necessity. To cure your scruples, I see that the delay must be involuntary on your part; you must be able to tell Sophie you leave her against your will. Very well, be content, and since you will not obey reason, you must recognize another master. You have not forgotten the agreement that you made with me. Emile, you must leave Sophie; I wish it."
[1590:] For a moment or two he is downcast, silent, and thoughtful, then looking me full in the face he says, "When do we start?" "In a week," I reply. "Sophie must be prepared for our going. Women are weaker than we are, and we must show consideration for them; and this parting is not a duty for her as if is for you, so she may be allowed to bear it less bravely."
[1591:] The temptation to continue the daily history of their love up to the time of their separation is very great; but I have already presumed too much upon the good nature of my readers. Let us abridge the story so as to bring it to an end. Will Emile face the situation as bravely at his mistress' feet as he has done in conversation with his friend? I think he will; his confidence is rooted in the sincerity of his love. He would be more at a loss with her if it cost him less to leave her; he would leave her feeling himself to blame, and that is a difficult part for a man of honour to play. But the greater the sacrifice, the more credit he demands for it in the sight of her who makes it so difficult. He has no fear that she will misunderstand his motives. Every look seems to say, "Oh, Sophie, read my heart and be faithful to me; your lover is not without virtue."
[1592:] Proud Sophie, on her part, tries to bear the unforeseen blow with dignity. She tries to seem as if she did not care, but since the honors of war are not hers but Emile's, her strength is less equal to the task. She weeps, she sighs against her will, and the fear of being forgotten embitters the pain of parting. She does not weep in her lover's sight, she does not let him see her terror; she would die rather than utter a sigh in his presence. It is I who receive her complaints, who sees her tears; it is I who am supposed to be her confidant. Women are very clever and know how to conceal their cleverness; the more she frets in private, the more pains she takes to please me; she feels that her fate is in my hands.
[1593:] I console and comfort her; I make myself answerable for her lover, or rather for her husband. Let her be as true to him as he to her and I promise they will be married in two years' time. She respects me enough to believe that I do not want to deceive her. I am guarantor to each for the other. Their hearts, their virtue, my honesty, the confidence of their parents, all combine to reassure them. But what can reason avail against weakness? They part as if they were never to meet again.
[1594:] Then it is that Sophie recalls the regrets of Eucharis, and imagines herself in her place. Do not let us revive that fantacized love during his absence. "Sophie," say I one day, "exchange books with Emile; let him have your Telemachus that he may learn to be like him, and let him give you his Spectator which you enjoy reading. Study the duties of good wives in it, and remember that in two years time you will undertake those duties." The exchange gives pleasure to both and inspires them with confidence. At last the sad day arrives and they must part.
[1595:] Sophy's worthy father, with whom I arranged the whole business, takes affectionate leave of me, and drawing me aside, speaks seriously and somewhat emphatically, saying, "I have done everything to please you. I knew was dealing with a man of honor. I have only one word to say. Remember that your pupil has signed his marriage contract on my daughter's lips."
[1596:] What a difference in the behaviour of the two lovers! Emile, impetuous, eager, excited, almost beside himself, cries out loud and sheds torrents of tears upon the hands of father, mother, and daughter; with sobs he embraces every one in the house and repeats the same thing over and over again in a way that would be ludicrous at any other time. Sophie, pale, sorrowful, doleful, and heavy-eyed, remains quiet without a word or a tear; she sees no one, not even Emile. In vain he takes her hand, and clasps her in his arms; she remains motionless, unheeding his tears, his caresses, and everything he does. So far as she is concerned, he is gone already. A sight more moving than the prolonged lamentations and noisy regrets of her lover! He sees, he feels, he is heartbroken. I drag him reluctantly away; if I left him another minute, he would never go. I am delighted that he should carry this touching picture with him. If he should ever be tempted to forget what is due to Sophie, his heart must have strayed very far indeed if I cannot bring it back to her by recalling her as he saw her last.
[1597:] ON TRAVEL
[1598:] Is it good for young people to travel? The question is often asked and as often hotly disputed. If it were stated otherwise -- Are men the better for having travelled? -- perhaps there would be less difference of opinion.
[1599:] The misuse of books is the death of sound learning. People think they know what they have read, and take no pains to learn. Too much reading only produces a pretentious ignoramus. There was never so much reading in any age as the present, and never was there less learning; in no country of Europe are so many histories and books of travel printed as in France, and nowhere is there less knowledge of the mind and manners of other nations. So many books lead us to neglect the book of the world; if we read it at all, we keep each to our own page. If the phrase, "Can one become a Persian," were unknown to me, I should suspect on hearing it that it came from the country where national prejudice is most prevalent and from the sex which does most to increase it.
[1600:] A Parisian thinks he has a knowledge of men and he knows only Frenchmen. His town is always full of foreigners, but he considers every foreigner as a strange phenomenon which has no equal in the universe. You must have a close acquaintance with the middle classes of that great city, you must have lived among them, before you can believe that people could be at once so witty and so stupid. The strangest thing about it is that probably every one of them has read a dozen times a description of the country whose inhabitants inspire him with such wonder.
[1601:] To discover the truth amidst our own prejudices and those of the authors is too hard a task. I have been reading books of travels all my life, but I never found two that gave me the same idea of the same nation. On comparing my own scanty observations with what I have read, I have decided to abandon the travellers and regret the time wasted in trying to learn from their books; for I am quite convinced that for that sort of study seeing, not reading, is required. That would be true enough if every traveller were honest, if he only said what he saw and believed, and if truth were not tinged with false colors from his own eyes. What must it be when we have to disentangle the truth from the web of lies and bad faith?
[1602:] Let us leave the boasted resources of books to those who are content to use them. Like the art of Raymond Lull they good for setting people chattering about things they do not know; they are good for setting fifteen-year-old Platos discussing philosophy in the clubs and teaching people the customs of Egypt and the Indies on the word of Paul Lucas or Tavernier.
[1603:] I maintain that it is beyond dispute that any one who has only seen one nation does not know men; he only knows those men among whom he has lived. Hence there is another way of stating the question about travel: "Is it enough for a well-educated man to know his fellow-countrymen, or ought he to know mankind in general?" Then there is no place for argument or uncertainty. See how greatly the solution of a difficult problem may depend on the way in which it is stated.
[1604:] But is it necessary to travel the whole globe to study mankind? Need we go to Japan to study Europeans? Need we know every individual before we know the species? No, there are men so much alike that it is not worth while to study them individually. When you have seen a dozen Frenchmen you have seen them all. Though one cannot say as much of the English and other nations, it is, however, certain that every nation has its own specific character, which is derived by induction from the study, not of one, but many of its members. He who has compared a dozen nations knows men, just he who has compared a dozen Frenchmen knows the French.
[1605:] To acquire knowledge it is not enough to travel hastily through a country. Observation demands eyes and the power of directing them towards the object we desire to know. There are plenty of people who learn no more from their travels than from their books because they do not know how to think, because in reading their mind is at least under the guidance of the author, and in their travels they do not know how to see for themselves. Others learn nothing because they have no desire to learn. Their object is so entirely different that it hardly strikes them; it is very unlikely that you will see clearly what you take no trouble to look for. The French travel more than any other nation, but they are so taken up with their own customs that everything else is confused together. There are Frenchmen in every corner of the globe. In no country of the world do you find more people who have travelled than in France. And yet of all the nations of Europe, that which has seen most, knows least.
[1606:] The English are also travellers, but they travel in another fashion; these two nations must always be at opposite extremes. The English nobility travels, the French stays at home; the French people travel, the English stay at home. This difference does credit, I think, to the English. The French almost always travel for their own ends; the English do not seek their fortune in other lands, unless in the way of commerce and with their hands full; when they travel it is to spend their money, not to live by their wits; they are too proud to cringe before strangers. This is why they learn more abroad than the French who have some other object in mind. Yet the English have their national prejudices; but these prejudices are not so much the result of ignorance as of feeling. The Englishman's prejudices are the result of pride, the Frenchman's are due to vanity.
[1607:] Just as the least cultivated nations are usually the best, so those travel best who travel least; they have made less progress than we in our frivolous pursuits, they are less concerned with the objects of our empty curiosity, so that they give their attention to what is really useful. I hardly know any but the Spaniards who travel in this fashion. While the Frenchman is running after all the artists of the country, while the Englishman is getting a copy of some antique, while the German is taking his notebook to every scholar, the Spaniard is silently studying the government, the manners of the country, its police, and he is the only one of the four who from all that he has seen will carry home any observation useful to his own country.
[1608:] The ancients travelled little, read little, and wrote few books. Yet we see in those books that remain to us, that they observed each other more thoroughly than we observe our contemporaries. Without going back to the days of Homer, the only poet who transports us to the country he describes, we cannot deny to Herodotus the glory of having best painted manners in his history, though he does it rather by narrative than by comment. Still he does it better than all our historians whose books are overladen with portraits and characters. Tacitus has described the Germans of his time better than any author has described the Germans of to-day. There can be no doubt that those who have devoted themselves to ancient history know more about the Greeks, Carthaginians, Romans, Gauls, and Persians than any nation of to-day knows about its neighbors.
[1609:] It must also be admitted that the original characteristics of different nations are changing day by day and are therefore more difficult to grasp. As races blend and nations intermingle, those national differences which formerly struck the observer at first sight gradually disappear. Before our time every nation remained more or less cut off from the rest; the means of communication were fewer; there was less travelling, less of mutual or conflicting interests, less political and civil intercourse between nation and nation. Those intricate schemes of royalty, miscalled diplomacy, were less frequent; there were no permanent ambassadors resident at foreign courts; long voyages were rare, there was little foreign trade, and what little there was, was either the work of princes who employed foreigners or of people of no account who had no influence on others and did nothing to bring the nations together. The relations between Europe and Asia in the present century are a hundredfold more numerous than those between Gaul and Spain in the past; Europe alone was less accessible than the whole world is now.
[1610:] Moreover, the peoples of antiquity usually considered themselves as the original inhabitants of their country. They had dwelt there so long that all record was lost of the far-off times when their ancestors settled there; they had been there so long that the place had made a lasting impression on them. But in modern Europe the invasions of the barbarians, following upon the Roman conquests, have caused an extraordinary confusion. The Frenchmen of to-day are no longer the big fair men of old; the Greeks are no longer beautiful enough to serve as a sculptor's model; the very face of the Romans has changed as well as their character; the Persians, originally from Tartary, are daily losing their native ugliness through the intermixture of Circassian blood. Europeans are no longer Gauls, Germans, Iberians, Allobroges; they are all Scythians, more or less degenerate in countenance, and still more so in conduct.
[1611:] This is why the ancient distinctions of race, the effect of soil and climate, made a greater difference between nation and nation in respect of temperament, looks, manners, and character than can be distinguished in our own time, when the fickleness of Europe leaves no time for natural causes to work, when the forests are cut down and the marshes drained, when the earth is more generally, though less thoroughly, tilled, so that the same differences between country and country can no longer be detected even in purely physical features.
[1612:] If they considered these facts perhaps people would not be in such a hurry to ridicule Herodotus, Ctesias, Pliny for having described the inhabitants of different countries each with its own peculiarities and with striking differences which we no longer see. To recognise such types of face we should need to see the men themselves; no change must have passed over them, if they are to remain the same. If we could contemplate at one time all the people who have ever lived, who can doubt that we should find greater variations between one century and another than are now found between nation and nation.
[1613:] At the same time, while observation becomes more difficult, it is more carelessly and badly done. This is another reason for the small success of our researches into the natural history of the human race. The information acquired by travel depends upon the object of the journey. If this object is a system of philosophy, the traveller only sees what he desires to see; if it is self-interest, it engrosses the whole attention of those concerned. Commerce and the arts which blend and mingle the nations at the same time prevent them from studying each other. If they know how to make a profit out of their neighbours, what more do they need to know?
[1614:] It is a good thing to know all the places where we might live, so as to choose those where we can live most comfortably. If every one lived by his own efforts, all he would need to know would be which country could supply his food. The savage, who has need of no one, and envies no one, neither knows nor seeks to know any other country but his own. If he requires more land for his subsistence he shuns inhabited places; he makes war upon the wild beasts and feeds on them. But for us, to whom civil life has become a necessity and who cannot get along without comsuming other men, self-interest prompts each one of us to frequent those districts where there are most people to be devoured. This is why we all flock to Rome, Paris, and London. It is always in the capitals that human blood is sold at the best price. Thus we only know the great nations, which are just like one another.
[1615:] They say that men of learning travel to obtain information. This is an error. They travel for self-interest like everyone else. Philosophers like Plato and Pythagoras are no longer to be found, or if they are, it must be in far-off lands. Our men of learning only travel at the king's command; they are sent out, their expenses are paid, they receive a salary for seeing such and such things, and the object of that journey is certainly not the study of any question of morals. Their whole time is required for the object of their journey, and they are too honest not to earn their pay. If in any country whatsoever there are people travelling at their own expense, you may be sure it is not to study men but to teach them. It is not knowledge they desire but ostentation. How could their travels teach them to shake off the yoke of public opinion? It is public opinion that sends them on their travels.
[1616:] There is a big difference between travelling to see the country and travelling to see the people. The former is the usual aim of the curious, the latter is merely subordinate to it. If you wish to travel as a philosopher you should reverse this order. The child observes things till he is old enough to study men. Man should begin by studying his fellows human beings; he can study things later if time permits.
[1617:] It is therefore illogical to conclude that travel is useless because we do not travel well. But granting the usefulness of travel, does it follow that it is good for all of us? Far from it. There are very few people who are really fit to travel; it is only good for those who are strong enough in themselves to listen to the voice of error without being deceived, strong enough to see the example of vice without being led away by it. Travelling accelerates the progress of nature and completes the man for good or evil. When a man returns from travelling about the world he is what he will be all his life; there are more who return bad than good, because there are more who start with an inclination towards evil. In the course of their travels, young people, badly-educated and badly-behaved, pick up all the vices of the nations among whom they have sojourned and none of the virtues with which those vices are associated. But those who are happily born, those whose natural goodness has been well cultivated, those who travel with a real desire to learn -- all return better and wiser than they went. This is how my Emile will travel; this is how another young man, worthy of a nobler age travelled, one whose worth was the admiration of Europe, one who died for his country in the flower of his manhood. He deserved to live, and his tomb, ennobled by his virtues only, received no honour till a stranger's hand adorned it with flowers.
[1618:] Everything that is done in reason should have its rules. Travel, undertaken as a part of education should therefore have its rules. To travel for travelling's sake is to wander, to be a vagabond; to travel to learn is still too vague; learning without some definite aim is worthless. I would give a young man a personal interest in learning, and that interest, well-chosen, will also decide the nature of the instruction. This is merely the continuation of the method I have hitherto practised.
[1619:] Now after he has considered himself in his physical relations to other creatures, in his moral relations with other men, there remains to be considered his civil relations with his fellow-citizens. To do this he must first study the nature of government in general, then the different forms of government, and lastly the particular government under which he was born, to know if it suits him to live under it. For by a right which nothing can abrogate, every man, when he comes of age, becomes his own master, free to renounce the contract by which he forms part of the community, by leaving the country in which that contract holds good. It is only by sojourning in that country, after he has come to years of discretion, that he is supposed to have tacitly confirmed the pledge given by his ancestors. He acquires the right to renounce his country, just as he has the right to renounce all claim to his father's lands; yet his place of birth was a gift of nature, and in renouncing it, he renounces what is his own. Strictly speaking, every man remains in the land of his birth at his own risk unless he voluntarily submits to its laws in order to acquire a right to their protection.
[1620:] For example, I would say to Emile, "Until now you have lived under my guidance; you were unable to rule yourself. But now you are approaching the age when the law, giving you the control over your property, makes you master of your person. You are about to find yourself alone in society, dependent on everything, even on your inheritance. You mean to settle down; that is a praiseworthy intention, it is one of the duties of man. But before you marry you must know what sort of man you want to be, how you wish to spend your life, what steps you mean to take to secure a living for your family and for yourself. For although we should not make this our main business, it must be definitely considered. Do you wish to be dependent on men whom you despise? Do you want to establish your fortune and determine your position by means of civil relations which will make you always dependent on the choice of others, which will compel you, in order to escape from fools, to become a fool yourself?"
[1621:] In the next place I will show him every possible way of using his money in trade, in the civil service, in finance, and I will show him that in every one of these there are risks to be taken; every one of them places him in a precarious and dependent position and compels him to adapt his morals, his sentiments, his conduct to the example and the prejudices of others.
[1622:] "There is" I will tell him, "yet another way of spending your time and money. You may join the army; that is to say, you may hire yourself out at very high wages to go and kill men who never did you any harm. This trade is held in great honor among men, and they cannot think too highly of those who are fit for nothing better. Moreover, this profession, far from making you independent of other resources, makes them all the more necessary; for it is a point of honour in this profession to ruin those who have adopted it. It is true they are not all ruined; it is even becoming fashionable to grow rich in this as in other professions. But if I told you how people manage to do it, I doubt whether you would desire to follow their example.
[1623:] "Moreover, you must know that, even in this trade, it is no longer a question of courage or valour, unless with regard to the ladies. On the contrary, the more cringing, mean, and degraded you are, the more honor you obtain. If you have decided to take your profession seriously you will be despised, you will be hated, you will very possibly be driven out of the service; or at least you will fall a victim to favoritism and be supplanted by your comrades -- because you have been doing your duty in the trenches, while they have been attending to their dress."
[1624:] We can hardly suppose that any of these occupations will be much to Emile's taste. "Why," he will exclaim, "have I forgotten the games of my childhood? Have I lost the use of my arms? Is my strength failing me? Do I not know how to work? What do I care about all your fine professions and all the silly prejudices of others? I know no other pride than to be kindly and just, no other happiness than to live in independence with her I love, gaining health and a good appetite by each day's work. All these difficulties you speak of do not concern me. The only property I desire is a little farm in some quiet corner. I will devote all my thriftiness to making it pay, and I will live without a care. Give me Sophie and my land, and I shall be rich."
[1625:] "Yes, my dear friend, that is all a wise man requires, a wife and land of his own; but these treasures are scarcer than you think. The rarest you have found already; let us discuss the other.
[1626:] "A field of your own, dear Emile! Where will you find it, in what remote corner of the earth can you say, 'Here am I master of myself and of this estate which belongs to me'? We know where a man may grow rich; who knows where he can do without riches? Who knows where to live free and independent, without doing harm to others and without fear of being harmed himself? Do you think it is so easy to find a place where you can always live like an honest man? If there is any legitimate and secure way of living without intrigues, without business deals, without dependence on others, it is, I admit, to live by the labor of our hands, by the cultivation of our own land. But where is the state in which a man can say, 'The earth which I dig is my own'? Before choosing this happy spot, be sure that you will find the peace you desire; beware that a violent government, a persecuting religion, and perverse customs do not come to trouble you. Secure yourself against arbitrary taxes which would devour the fruits of your labor or endless lawsuits which would consume your capital. Take care that you can live rightly without having to pay court to intendents, deputies, judges, priests, powerful neighbours, and to fools of every kind who are always ready to annoy you if you neglect them. Above all, secure yourself from annoyance on the part of the rich and great; remember that their estates may anywhere adjoin your Naboth's vineyard. If unluckily for you some great man buys or builds a house near your cottage, make sure that he will not find a way, under some pretence or other, to encroach on your lands to round off his estate, or that you do not find him at once absorbing all your resources to build his own road. If you keep sufficient credit to ward off all these disagreeables, you might as well keep your money, for it will cost you no more to keep it. Riches and credit lean upon each other; the one can hardly stand without the other.
[1627:] "I have more experience than you, dear Emile; I see more clearly the difficulties in the way of your plan. Yet it is a fine plan and honorable; it would make you happy indeed. Let us try to carry it out. I have a suggestion to make; let us devote the two years from now till the time of your return to choosing a place in Europe where you could live happily with your family, secure from all the dangers I have just described. If we succeed, you will have discovered that true happiness, so often sought for in vain; and you will not have to regret the time spent in its search. If we fail, you will be cured of a mistaken idea; you will console yourself for an inevitable ill, and you will bow to the law of necessity."
[1628:] I do not know whether all my readers will see where this suggested inquiry will lead us; but this I do know, if Emile returns from his travels, begun and continued with this end in view, without a full knowledge of questions of government, public morality, and political philosophy of every kind, we are greatly lacking, he in intelligence and I in judgment.
[1629:] The science of politics is and probably always will be unknown. Grotius, our leader in this branch of learning, is only a child, and what is worse an untruthful child. When I hear Grotius praised to the skies and Hobbes overwhelmed with abuse, I perceive how little sensible men have read or understood these authors. As a matter of fact, their principles are exactly alike; they only differ in their mode of expression. Their methods are also different: Hobbes relies on sophism; Grotius relies on the poets; they are agreed in everything else.
[1630:] In modern times the only man who could have created this vast and useless science was the illustrious Montesquieu. But he was not concerned with the principles of political right; he was content to deal with the positive laws of settled governments; and nothing could be more different than these two branches of study.
[1631:] Yet he who would judge wisely in matters of actual government is forced to combine the two; he must know what ought to be in order to judge what is. The chief difficulty in the way of throwing light upon this important matter is to induce an individual to discuss and to answer these two questions. "How does it concern me; and what can I do?" Emile is in a position to answer both.
[1632:] The next difficulty is due to the prejudices of childhood, the principles in which we were brought up. It is due above all to the partiality of authors, who are always talking about truth, though they care very little about it; it is only their own interests that they care for, and of these they say nothing. Now the people has neither professorships, nor pensions, nor membership of the academies to bestow. How then shall their rights be established by men of that type? The education I have given him has removed this difficulty also from Emile's path. He scarcely knows what is meant by government; his business is to find the best. He does not want to write books; if ever he did so, it would not be to pay court to those in authority, but to establish the rights of humanity.
[1633:] There is a third difficulty, more specious than real, a difficulty which I neither desire to solve nor even to state. It is enough that I am not afraid of it, sure I am that in inquiries of this kind great talents are less necessary than a genuine love of justice and a sincere reverence for truth. If ever matters of government can be fairly discussed it is according to me now or never.
[1634:] Before beginning our observations we must lay down rules of procedure; we must find a scale with which to compare our measurements. Our principles of political law are our scale. Our actual measurements are the civil law of each country.
[1635:] Our elementary notions are plain and simple, being taken directly from the nature of things. They will take the form of problems discussed between us, and they will not be formulated into principles until we have found a satisfactory solution of our problems.
[1636:] For example, we shall begin with the state of nature. We shall see whether men are born slaves or free, in a community or independent; if their association the result of free will or of force; if the force which compels them to unite ever can form a permanent law, by which this prior force becomes binding, even when another has been imposed upon it. So that if, since the power of King Nimrod, who is said to have been the first conqueror, every other power which has overthrown the original power is unjust and usurping, are there no lawful kings but the descendants of Nimrod or their representatives? Or if this original power has ceased, has the power which succeeded it any right over us, and does it destroy the binding force of the former power, so that we are not bound to obey except under compulsion, and we are free to rebel as soon as we are capable of resistance? Such a right is not very different from might; it is little more than a play upon words.
[1637:] We shall inquire whether man might not say that all sickness comes from God, and that it is therefore a crime to send for the doctor.
[1638:] Again, we shall inquire whether we are bound by our conscience to give our purse to a highwayman when we might conceal it from him, for the pistol in his hand is also a power.
[1639:] Does this word power in this context mean something different from a power which is lawful and therefore subject to the laws to which it owes its being?
[1640:] Supposing that we reject this right of force and admit the right of nature or paternal authority as the foundation of society, we will inquire into the extent of this authority; what is its foundation in nature? Has it any other grounds but that of its usefulness to the child, his weakness, and the natural love which his father feels towards him? When the child is no longer weak and his reason begins to ripen, does not he become the sole natural judge of what is necessary for his preservation? Is he not therefore his own master, independent of all men, even of his father? For is it not still more certain that the son loves himself, than that the father loves the son?
[1641:] The father being dead, should the children obey the eldest brother, or some other person who does not have the natural affection of a father? Should there always be, from family to family, one single head to whom all the family owe obedience? If so, how has power ever come to be divided, and how is it that there is more than one head to govern the human race throughout the world?
[1642:] Supposing that peoples were formed by choice, we will then distinguish between right and fact, and we will ask whether being thus subjected to their brothers, uncles, or other relations, not because they were obliged to, but because they choose to, this kind of society would not always turn into a free and voluntary association.
[1643:] Passing on to the law of slavery, we will inquire whether a man can ligitimately give over to another his right to himself, without restriction, without reserve, without any kind of conditions. That is to say, can he renounce his body, his life, his reason, his very self, all morality in his actions and in a word cease to exist before his death, in spite of nature which places him directly in charge of his own preservation, in spite of conscience and his reason which prescribe what he should do and what he should abstain from doing?
[1644:] If there is any reservation or restriction in the act of slavery, we shall discuss whether this act does not then become a true contract, in which both the contracting powers, having in this respect no common superior,
[Note 16] remain their own judge as to the conditions of the contract, and consequently free to this extent and able to break the contract so soon as it becomes hurtful.
[1645:] If then a slave cannot alienate himself without reservation to his master, how can a nation alienate itself without reservation to its head? And if a slave is to judge whether his master is fulfilling his contract, is not the people to judge whether its head is fulfilling his contract?
[1646:] Forced thus to retrace our steps, and considering the meaning of this word collective people we will inquire whether some contract, a tacit contract at the least, is not required to make a people, a contract anterior to that which we are assuming.
[1647:] Since before choosing a king a people is a people, what made it a people, except the social contract? The social contract is therefore the foundation of all civil society, and it is in the nature of this act that we must seek the nature of the society formed by it.
[1648:] We will inquire into the meaning of this contract and whether it not be fairly well expressed in this formula: "Each of us puts in common his goods, his person, his life and all is power under the supreme direction of the general will, and we receive as a body each member as an indivisible part of the whole."
[1649:] Assuming this, in order to define the terms we need, we will observe that in place of the individual person of each contracting party, this act of association produces a moral and collective body composed of as many members as the assembly has of voices. This public person in general takes the name of body politic. It is called the State by its members when it is passive, and the Sovereign when it is active, and a Power when compared with its equals. With regard to the members themselves, collectively they are known as the people and individually as citizens, as members of the city or participants in the sovereign authority, and subjects when they are subjected to the same authority.
[1650:] We shall note that this act of association includes a mutual pledge on the part of the public and the individuals; and that each individual, contracting, so to speak, with himself, finds himself engaged in a double relation -- that is, as a member of the sovereign with regard to other individuals, as member of the state with regard to the sovereign.
[1651:] We shall also note that while no one is bound by any engagement to which he was not himself a party, the public deliberation which may be binding on all the subjects with regard to the sovereign because of the two different relations under which each of them is envisaged, cannot be binding on the state with regard to itself. However one looks at it, there is not, and cannot be, any other fundamental law, properly so called, except the social contract. This does not mean that the body politic cannot, in certain respects, pledge itself to others; for with regard to the foreigner, it then becomes a simple creature, an individual.
[1652:] Thus the two contracting parties, that is each individual and the public, having no common superior to decide their differences, we will inquire if each of them remains free to break the contract at will, that is to say to repudiate it on his side as soon as he considers it hurtful.
[1653:] To clear up this difficulty, we shall observe that, according to the social pact, the sovereign power is only able to act through the common, general will; so its decrees can only have a general or common aim. Hence it follows that a private individual cannot be directly injured by the sovereign unless all are injured, which is impossible, for that would be to want to harm oneself. Thus the social contract has no need of any warrant but the public force, for it can only be broken by individuals, and they are not therefore freed from their engagement but punished for having broken it.
[1654:] To decide all such questions rightly, we must always bear in mind that the nature of the social pact is of a particular nature in itself, in that the people only contracts with itself -- that is to say the body of the people as sovereign, with the individuals as subjects. This condition is essential to the construction and working of the political machine; it alone makes pledges legitimate, reasonable, and secure, without which it would be absurd, tyrannical, and liable to the most enormous abuse.
[1655:] Individuals having submitted themselves only to the sovereign, and the sovereign power being nothing other than the general will, we shall see that every man in obeying the sovereign only obeys himself, and how one is much freer under the social part than in the state of nature.
[1656:] Having compared natural and civil liberty with regard to persons, we will compare them as to property, the rights of ownership and the rights of sovereignty, the private and the common domain. If the sovereign power rests upon the right of ownership, there is no right more worthy of respect. The right of owndership is inviolable and sacred for the sovereign power so long as it remains a private individual right; as soon as it is viewed as common to all the citizens, it is subject to the common will, and this will can destroy it. Thus the sovereign has no right to touch the property of one or many; but it may lawfully take possession of the property of all as was done in Sparta in the time of Lycurgus; while the abolition of debts by Solon was an illegitimate act.
[1657:] Since nothing is binding on the subjects except the general will, let us inquire how this will is manifested, by what signs we may recognise it with certainty, what is a law, and what are the true characters of the law. This subject is completely new; the definition of law has yet to be made.
[1658:] As soon as the nation considers individually one or more of its members, the nation is divided. A relation is established between the whole and its part which makes of them two separate entities, of which the part in one, and the whole, minus that part, is the other. But the whole minus the part is not the whole; as long as this relation exists, there is no longer a whole, but two unequal parts.
[1659:] On the contrary, if the whole nation legislates for the whole nation, it is only considering itself; and if a relation is set up, it is between the whole community regarded from one point of view and the whole community regarded from another point of view, without any division of that whole. Then the object of the statute is general, and the will which makes that statute is general too. Let us see if there is any other kind of act which may bear the name of law.
[1660:] If the sovereign can only speak through laws, and if the law can never have any object other than a general object equally relative to all the members of the state, it follows that the sovereign never has the power to legislate with regard to particular objects. And yet since it is necessary for the preservation of the state that particular cases should also be dealt with, we must see how this can be done.
[1661:] The acts of the sovereign can only be acts of the general will, that is laws. There must also be determining acts
[or decrees] of power or government for the execution of those same laws; and these, on the contrary, can only have particular aims. Thus the acts by which the sovereign rules that a leader will be elected is a law; the act by which that leader is elected, in pursuance of the law, is only a decree of government.
[1662:] Here is therefore a third relation in which the assembled people may be considered -- that is, as magistrates or executors of the law which it has passed in its capacity as sovereign.
[Note 17]
[1663:] We will examine whether it is possible for the nation to deprive itself of its right of sovereignty, to invest it in one or more persons. For the act of election not being a law, and in this act the people not being itself sovereign, we do not see how it can transfer a right which it does not have.
[1664:] The essence of sovereignty consisting in the general will, it is equally hard to see how one can be certain that an individual will shall always be in agreement with the general will. One would more likely assume that it will often be opposed to it; for individual interest always tends to privileges, while the common interest always tends to equality, and if such an agreement were possible, no sovereign right could exist, unless the agreement were either necessary or indestructible.
[1665:] We will inquire if, without violating the social pact, the leaders of the people, under whatever name they are elected, can ever be anything other than the officers of the people, entrusted by them with the duty of carrying the law into execution. Are not these leaders themselves accountable for their administration, and are not they themselves subject to the laws which it is their business to see carried out?
[1666:] If the people cannot alienate its supreme right, can it entrust it to others for a time? If it cannot give itself a master, can it give itself representatives? This is an important question and deserves discussion.
[1667:] If the people can have neither a sovereign nor representatives we will inquire how it can pass its laws itself, if it must have many laws, if it must often change them, if it is easy for a great people to be its own lawgiver.
[1668:] If the Roman people was not a great people.
[1669:] If it is good that there be great peoples
[1670:] It follows from the preceding considerations that there is in the state an intermediate body between subjects and sovereign; and this intermediate body, consisting of one or more members, is entrusted with the public administration, the carrying out of the laws, and the maintenance of civil and political liberty.
[1671:] The members of this body are called magistrates or kings, that is to say, rulers. This body, as a whole, considered in relation to its members, is called the prince, and considered in its actions it is called the government.
[1672:] If we consider the action of the whole body upon itself, that is to say the relation of the whole to the whole, of the sovereign to the state, we can compare this relation to that of the extremes in a proportion of which the government is the middle term. The magistrate receives from the sovereign the commands which he gives to the people, and when everything is compensated for his product or his power is in the same degree as the product or power of the citizens who are subjects on one side of the proportion and sovereigns on the other. None of the three terms can be varied without at once destroying this proportion. If the sovereign tries to govern, and if the prince wants to make the laws, or if the subject refuses to obey them, disorder takes the place of order, and the state falls to pieces under despotism or anarchy.
[1673:] Let us suppose that this state consists of ten thousand citizens. The sovereign can only be considered collectively and as a body, but each individual, as a subject, has his private and independent existence. Thus the sovereign is as ten thousand to one. That is to say, every member of the state has, as his own share, only one ten-thousandth part of the sovereign power, although he is subject to the whole. Let the people be composed of one hundred thousand men, the position of the subjects is unchanged, and each continues to bear the whole weight of the laws, while his vote, reduced to the one hundred-thousandth part, has ten times less influence in the making of the laws. Thus the subject being always one, the sovereign is relatively greater as the number of the citizens is increased. Hence it follows that the more the state grows in size, the more liberty is diminished.
[1674:] Now the greater the disproportion between private wishes and the general will, that is to say between customs and laws, the greater must be the power of repression. On the other side, the greatness of the state gives the depositaries of public authority greater temptations and additional means of abusing that authority, so that the more power the government has to control the people, the more power the sovereign should have to control the government.
[1675:] From this double relation it follows that the continued proportion between the sovereign, the prince, and the people is not an arbitrary idea, but a consequence of the nature of the state. Moreover, it follows that one of the extremes, that is, the people, being constant, every time the double ratio increases or decreases, the simple ratio increases or diminishes in turn; which cannot happen without the middle term changing accordingly. From this we may conclude that there is no single absolute form of government, but there must be as many different forms of government as there are states of different size.
[1676:] If the greater the numbers of the people the less the ratio between its manners and its laws; by a fairly clear analogy we may also say that the more numerous the magistrates, the weaker the government.
[1677:] To make this principle clearer we will distinguish three essentially different wills in the person of each magistrate. First, his own will as an individual, which looks to his own advantage only. Secondly, the common will of the magistrates, which is concerned only with the advantage of the prince, a will which may be called corporate, and one which is general in relation to the government and particular in relation to the state of which the government forms part. Thirdly, the will of the people, or the sovereign will, which is general, as much in relation to the state viewed as the whole as in relation to the government viewed as a part of the whole. In a perfect legislature the private individual will should be almost nothing; the corporate will belonging to the government should be quite subordinate, and therefore the general and sovereign will is the master of all the others. On the other hand, in the natural order, these different wills become more and more active in proportion as they become centralised. The general will is always weak, the corporate will takes the second place, the individual will is preferred to all; so that every one is himself first, then a magistrate, and then a citizen; a series just the opposite of that required by the social order.
[1678:] Having laid down this principle, let us assume that the government is in the hands of one man. In this case the individual and the corporate will are absolutely one, and therefore this will has reached the greatest possible degree of intensity. Now the use of power depends on the degree of this intensity, and as the absolute power of the government is always that of the people, and therefore invariable, it follows that the rule of one man is the most active form of government.
[1679:] If, on the other hand, we unite the government with the supreme power, and make the prince the sovereign and the citizens so many magistrates, then the corporate will is completely lost in the general will, and will have no more activity than the general will, and it will leave the individual will in full vigour. Thus the government, though its absolute force is constant, will have the minimum of activity.
[1680:] These rules are incontestable in themselves, and other considerations only serve to confirm them. For example, we see the magistrates as a body far more active than the citizens as a body, so that the individual will always counts for more. For each magistrate usually has charge of some particular duty of government, while each citizen, in himself, has no particular duty of sovereignty. Moreover, the greater the state the greater its real power, although its power does not increase because of the increase in territory. But the state remaining unchanged, the magistrates are multiplied in vain; the government acquires no further real strength, because it is the depositary of that of the state, which I have assumed to be constant. Thus, this plurality of magistrates decreases the activity of the government without increasing its power.
[1681:] Having found that the power of the government is relaxed in proportion as the number of magistrates is multiplied, and that the more numerous the people, the more the controlling power must be increased, we shall infer that the ratio between the magistrates and the government should be inverse to that between subject and sovereign. That is to say, that the larger the state, the smaller the government, and that in like manner the number of leaders should be diminished because of the increased numbers of the people.
[1682:] In order to make this diversity of forms clearer, and to assign them their different names, we shall observe in the first place that the sovereign may entrust the care of the government to the whole nation or to the greater part of the nation, so that there are more citizen magistrates than private citizens. This form of government is called Democracy.
[1683:] Or the sovereign may restrict the government in the hands of a lesser number, so that there are more plain citizens than magistrates; and this form of government is called Aristocracy.
[1684:] Finally, the sovereign may concentrate the whole government in the hands of one man. This is the third and commonest form of government, and is called Monarchy or royal government
[1685:] We shall observe that all these forms, or the first and second at least, may be less or more, and that within tolerably wide limits. For democracy may include the whole nation, or may be confined to one half of it. Aristocracy, in its turn, may shrink from the half of the nation to the smallest number. Even royalty may be shared, either between father and son, between two brothers, or in some other fashion. There were always two kings in Sparta, and in the Roman empire there were as many as eight emperors at once, and yet it cannot be said that the empire was divided. There is a point where each form of government blends with the next; and under the three specific forms there may be really as many forms of government as there are citizens in the state.
[1686:] Nor is this all. In certain respects each of these governments is capable of subdivision into different parts, each administered in one of these three ways. From these forms in combination there may arise a multitude of mixed forms, since each may be multiplied by all the simple forms.
[1687:] In all ages there have been great disputes as to which is the best form of government, and people have failed to consider that each is the best in some cases and the worst in others. For ourselves, if the number of magistrates
[Note 18] in the various states is to be in inverse ratio to the number of the citizens, we infer that generally a democratic government is adapted to small states, an aristocratic government to those of moderate size, and a monarchy to large states.
[1688:] These inquiries furnish us with a clue by which we may discover what are the duties and rights of citizens, and whether they can be separated one from the other. What is our country, in what does it really consist, and how can each of us ascertain whether he has a country or not?
[1689:] Having thus considered every kind of civil society in itself, we shall compare them so as to note their relations one with another. We will see some large, some small, some strong, and some weak, attacking one another, offending one another, destroying one another; and in this continual action and reaction causing more misery and loss of life than if men had preserved their original freedom. We shall inquire whether too much or too little has not been accomplished in the matter of social institutions; whether individuals who are subject to law and to men, while societies preserve the independence of nature, are not exposed to the ills of both conditions without the advantages of either, and whether it would not be better to have no civil society in the world rather than to have many such societies. Is it not this mixed condition which partakes of both and secures neither?Per quem neutrum licet, nec tanquam in bello paratum esse, nec tanquam in pace securum.? Is it not this partial and imperfect association which gives rise to tyranny and war? And are not tyranny and war the worst scourges of humanity?
[1690:] Finally we will examine the kinds of remedies that people have sought for these inconveniences by means of leagues and confederations, which while leaving each state its own master in internal affairs arm it against any unjust aggression from outside. We will inquire how a good federative association may be established, what can make it lasting, and how far the rights of the confederation may be extended without destroying the right of sovereignty.
[1691:] The Abbé de Saint-Pierre proposed an association of all the states of Europe to maintain perpetual peace among them. Was this association practicable, and supposing that it were established, would it be likely to last?
[Note 19] * These inquiries lead us directly to all the questions of international law which may clear up the remaining difficulties of political law.
[1692:] Finally we shall lay down the real principles of the laws of war, and we will examine why Grotius and others have only stated false ones.
[1693:] I would not be surprised if in the middle of all our reasoning my pupil, who is a sensible young man, should interrupt me saying, "One would think we were building our edifice of wood and not of men; we are putting everything so exactly in its place!" "That is true, my friend; but remember that the law does not bend with the passions of men, and for us it is a question of first establishing the true principles of political right. Now that our foundations are laid, come and see what men have built upon them; and you will see some fine things!
[1694:] Then I set him to read Telemachus, and we pursue our journey. We are seeking that happy Salentum and the good Idomeneus made wise by misfortunes. By the way we find many like Protesilas but no Philocles; neither can Adrastes, King of the Daunians, be found. But let our readers picture our travels for themselves, or take the same journeys with Telemachus in their hand; and let us not suggest to them painful applications which the author himself avoids or makes in spite of himself.
[1695:] Moreover, Emile is not a king, nor am I a god, so that we are not distressed that we cannot imitate Telemachus and Mentor in the good they did. None know better than we how to keep to our own place, none have less desire to leave it. We know that the same task is given to all; that whoever loves what is right with all his heart and does the right so far as it is in his power, has fulfilled that task. We know that Telemachus and Mentor are creatures of the imagination. Emile does not travel in idleness and he does more good than if he were a prince. If we were kings we would be no greater benefactors. If we were kings and benefactors we would cause any number of real evils for every apparent good we supposed we were doing. If we were kings and sages, the first good deed we should desire to perform, for ourselves and for others, would be to abdicate our kingship and return to our present position.
[1696:] I have said why travel does so little for every one. What makes it still more barren for the young is the way in which they are sent on their travels. More concerned to amuse than to instruct, tutors generally take them from town to town, from palace to palace, where if they are men of learning and letters, they make them spend their time in libraries, or visiting antiquaries, or rummaging among old buildings transcribing ancient inscriptions. In every country they are busy over some other century, as if they were living in another country. So that after they have travelled all over Europe at great expense, a prey to frivolity or tedium, they return, having seen nothing to interest them, and having learnt nothing that could be of any possible use to them.
[1697:] All capitals are just alike. They are a mixture of all nations and all ways of living; they are not the place in which to study the nations. Paris and London seem to me the same town. Their inhabitants have a few prejudices of their own, but each has as many as the other, and all their rules of conduct are the same. We know the kind of people who will throng the court. We know the way of living which the crowds of people and the unequal distribution of wealth will produce. As soon as any one tells me of a town with two hundred thousand people, I know its life already. What I do not know about it is not worth going there to learn.
[1698:] To study the genius and character of a nation you should go to the more remote provinces, where there is less moving around, less commerce, where strangers seldom travel, where the inhabitants stay in one place, where there are fewer changes of wealth and position. Take a look at the capital on your way, but go and study the country far away from that capital. The French are not in Paris, but in Touraine; the English are more English in Mercia than in London, and the Spaniards more Spanish in Galicia than in Madrid. In these remoter provinces a people assumes its true character and shows what it really is; there the good or ill effects of the government are best perceived, just as you can measure the arc more exactly at a greater radius.
[1699:] The necessary relations between character and government have been so clearly pointed out in the book The Spirit of the Laws, that one cannot do better than have recourse to that work for the study of those relations. But speaking generally, there are two plain and simple standards by which to decide whether governments are good or bad. One is the population. Every country in which the population is decreasing is on its way to ruin; and the countries m which the population increases most rapidly, even were they the poorest countries in the world, are certainly the best governed.
[1700:] But this population must be the natural result of the government and the national character, for if it is caused by colonisation or any other temporary and accidental cause, then the remedy itself is evidence of the disease. When Augustus passed laws against celibacy, those laws showed that the Roman empire was already beginning to decline. Citizens must be induced to marry by the goodness of the government, not compelled to marry by law. You must not examine the effects of force, for the law which strives against the constitution has little or no effect. You should study what is done by the influence of public morals and by the natural inclination of the government, for these alone produce a lasting effect. It was the policy of the worthy Abbé de Saint-Pierre always to look for a little remedy for every individual ill instead of tracing them to their common source and seeing if they could not all be cured together. You do not need to treat separately every sore on a rich man's body; you should purify the blood which produces them. They say that in England there are prizes for agriculture; that is enough for me; that is proof enough that agriculture will not flourish there much longer.
[1701:] The second sign of the goodness or badness of the government and the laws is also to be found in the population, but it is to be found not in its numbers but in its distribution. Two states equal in size and population may be very unequal in strength; and the more powerful is always that in which the people are more evenly distributed over its territory; the country which has fewer large cities, and makes less show on this account, will always defeat the other. It is the cities which exhaust the state and are the cause of its weakness. The wealth which they produce is a sham wealth; there is much money and few goods. They say the city of Paris is worth a whole province to the King of France; for my own part I believe it costs him more than several provinces. I believe that Paris is fed by the provinces in more senses than one, and that the greater part of their revenues is poured into that town and stays there, without ever returning to the people or to the king. It is inconceivable that in this age of calculators there is no one to see that France would be much more powerful if Paris were destroyed. Not only is this ill-distributed population not advantageous to the state, it is more ruinous than depopulation itself, because depopulation only produces nothing, whereas the ill-regulated addition of still more people gives a negative result. When I hear an Englishman and a Frenchman so proud of the size of their capitals, and disputing whether London or Paris has more inhabitants, it seems to me that they are quarrelling as to which nation can claim the honour of being the worst governed.
[1702:] Study a people outside its cities; only thus will you really get to know it. It is nothing to see the apparent form of a government, overladen with the machinery of administration and the jargon of the administrators, if you have not also studied its nature as is seen in the effects it has upon the people, and in every degree of administration. The difference of form is really shared by every degree of the administration, and it is only by including every degree that you really know the difference. In one country you begin to feel the spirit of the minister in the manœuvres of his underlings; in another you must see the election of members of parliament to see if the nation is really free. In each and every country, he who has only seen the citiies cannot possibly know what the government is like, since its spirit is never the same in town and country. For it is the agricultural districts which form the country, and the country people who make the nation.
[1703:] This study of different peoples in their remoter provinces, and in the simplicity of their native genius, gives a general result which is very satisfactory, to my thinking, and very consoling to the human heart. It is that all the nations, if you observe them in this fashion, seem much more worth observing. The nearer they are to nature, the more kindness holds sway in their character. It is only when they are cooped up in cities, it is only when they are changed by culture, that they become depraved and that certain faults which were crude rather than injurious are exchanged for pleasing but pernicious vices.
[1704:] From this observation we see another advantage in the mode of travel I suggest. For young men, sojourning less in the big cities which are horribly corrupt, are less likely to catch the infection of vice. Among simpler people and less numerous company, they will preserve a surer judgment, a healthier taste, and better morals. But for the most part this contagion of vice is hardly to be feared for Emile; he has everything to protect him from it. Among all the precautions I have taken, I reckon much on the love he bears in his heart.
[1705:] We do not know the power of true love over youthful desires because we are ourselves as ignorant of it as they are, and those who have control over the young turn them from true love. Yet a young man must either love or fall into bad ways. It is easy to be deceived by appearances. You will quote any number of young men who are said to live very chastely without love; but show me one grown man, a real man, who can truly say that his youth was spent in this way and who speaks in good faith? In all our virtues, all our duties, people are content with appearances; for my own part I want the reality, and I am much mistaken if there is any other way of securing it beyond the means I have suggested.
[1706:] The idea of letting Emile fall in love before taking him on his travels is not my own. It was suggested to me by the following incident.
[1707:] I was in Venice calling on the tutor of a young Englishman. It was winter and we were sitting round the fire. The tutor's letters were brought from the post office. He glanced at them, and then read them aloud to his pupil. They were in English; I understood not a word, but while he was reading I saw the young man tear off some fine point lace ruffles which he was wearing, and throw them in the fire one after another, as quietly as he could, so that no one should see it. Surprised at this whim, I looked at his face and thought I perceived some emotion; but the external signs of passion, though much alike in all men, have national differences which may easily lead one astray. Nations have a different language of facial expression as well as of speech. I waited till the letters were finished and then showing the tutor the bare wrists of his pupil, which he did his best to hide, I said, "May I ask the meaning of this?"
[1708:] The tutor seeing what had happened began to laugh; he embraced his pupil with an air of satisfaction and, with his consent, he gave me the desired explanation.
[1709:] "The ruffles," said he, "which Mr. John has just torn to pieces, were a present from a lady in this town, who made them for him not long ago. Now you must know that Mr. John is engaged to a young lady in his own country, with whom he is greatly in love, and she well deserves it. This letter is from the lady's mother, and I will translate the passage which caused the destruction you witnessed.
[1710:] "'Lucy is always at work upon Mr. John's ruffles. Yesterday Miss Betty Roldham came to spend the afternoon and insisted on doing some of her work. I knew that Lucy was up very early this morning and I wanted to see what she was doing; I found her busy picking apart what Miss Betty had done. She would not have a single stitch in her present done by any hand but her own.'"
[1711:] Mr. John went to get another pair of ruffles, and I said to his tutor: "Your pupil has a very good disposition; but tell me is not the letter from Miss Lucy's mother a put up job? Is it not an expedient that you fabricated against the lady of the ruffles?" "No," said he, "it is quite genuine; I am not so artful as that; I have made use of simplicity and zeal, and God has blessed my efforts."
[1712:] This incident with regard to the young man stuck in my mind; it was sure to set a dreamer like me thinking.
[1713:] But it is time we finished. Let us take Mr. John back to Miss Lucy, or rather Emile backto Sophie. He brings her a heart as tender as ever, and a more enlightened mind, and he returns to his native land all the better for having made acquaintance with foreign governments through their vices and foreign peoples through their virtues. I have even taken care that he should associate himself with some man of worth in every nation, by means of a treaty of hospitality after the fashion of the ancients, and I shall not be sorry if this acquaintance is kept up by means of letters. Not only may this be useful, not only is it always pleasant to have a correspondent foreign lands, it is also an excellent antidote against the sway of national prejudices, to which we are liable all through our life, and to which sooner or later we are more or less enslaved. Nothing is better calculated to lessen the hold of such prejudices than a friendly interchange of opinions with sensible people whom we respect; they are free from our prejudices and we find ourselves face to face with theirs, and so we can set the one set of prejudices against the other and be safe from both. It is not the same thing to have to do with strangers in our own country and in theirs. In the former case there is always a certain amount of politeness which either makes them conceal their real opinions, or makes them think more favourably of our country while they are with us; when they get home again this disappears, and they merely do us justice. I should be very glad if the foreigner I consult has seen my country, but I shall not ask what he thinks of it till he is at home again. ---------------------------------------
[1714:] After having spent nearly two years travelling in a few of the great countries and many of the smaller countries of Europe, after having learned two or three of the main languages, after having seen what is really interesting in natural history, government, arts, or men, Emile, devoured by impatience, reminds me that our time is almost up. Then I say to him, "Well, my friend, you remember the main object of our travels; you have seen and observed; what is the final result of your observations? What decision have you come to?" Either my method is wrong, or he will answer me somewhat after this fashion:
[1715:] "What decision have I come to? I have decided to be what you made me and to add no fetters to those imposed upon me by nature and the laws. The more I study the works of men in their institutions, the more clearly I see that, by wishing to be independent they become slaves, and that their very freedom is wasted in vain attempts to assure its continuance. In order not to be carried away by the flood of things they form a million attachments; then as soon as they want to take a step forward they are surprised to find that everything drags them back. It seems to me that to set oneself free we need do nothing, we need only continue to desire freedom. It is you, my teacher, who have made me free by teaching me to yield to necessity. Come what may, I will let myself be carried along without constraint; and since I do not wish to combat necessity, I lay hold of nothing to keep me back. In our travels I have searched for some corner of the earth where I might be absolutely my own self; but where among men is one not dependent on their passions? Have examined everything closely I have discovered that my wishes were contradictory; for were I to hold to nothing else, I would at least hold to the land on which I had settled; my life would be attached to that land like the dryads were attached to their trees. I have discovered that the words empire and liberty are incompatible. I can only be master of a cottage by ceasing to be master of myself."'Hoc erat in votis, modus agri non its magnus.'Horace, lib. ii., sat. vi.
[1716:] "I remember that my property was the origin of our inquiries. You argued very forcibly that I could not keep both my wealth and my liberty; but when you wished me to be free and at the same time without needs, you desired two incompatible things, for I could only be independent of men by returning to dependence on nature. What then will I do with the fortune left to me by my parents? To begin with, I will not be dependent on it; I will cut myself loose from all the ties which bind me to it. If it is left in my hands, I will keep it; if I am deprived of it, I will not be dragged away with it. I will not trouble myself to keep it, but I will keep steadfastly to my own place. Rich or poor, I will be free. I will be free not merely in this country or in that; I will be free in any part of the world. All the chains of prejudice are broken; as far as I am concerned I know only the bonds of necessity. I have been trained to endure them from my childhood, and I will endure them until death, for I am a man. And why should I not wear those chains as a free man, since I would have to wear them even if I were a slave, together with the additional fetters of slavery?
[1717:] "What does it matter what role I play in the world? What difference does it make where I am? Wherever there are men, I am with my brothers; wherever there are none, I am at home. So long as I may be independent and rich, and have wherewithal to live, and I will live. If my wealth makes a slave of me, I will find it easy to renounce it. I have hands to work, and I will make a living. If my hands fail me, I will live if others will support me; if they leave me I will die. I will die even if left, for death is not the penalty of poverty, it is a law of nature. Whenever death comes I defy it; it will never find me making preparations for life; it shall never prevent me having lived.
[1718:] "This, my father, is my decision. If I were without passions, I would in my manhood be as independent as God himself, for I only desire what is and I should never fight against fate. At least, there is only one chain, a chain which I shall ever wear, a chain of which I may be justly proud. Come then, give me my Sophie, and I am free."
[1719:] "Dear Emile, I am very glad to hear you speak like a man, and to see the feelings of your heart. At your age this exaggerated unselfishness is not unpleasing. It will decrease when you have children of your own, and then you will be just what a good father and a wise man ought to be. I knew what the result would be before our travels; I knew that when you saw our institutions you would be far from reposing a confidence in them which they do not deserve. It is in vain that we seek freedom under the safeguard of the laws. Laws! Where is there any law? Where is there any respect for law? Under the name of law you have everywhere seen the rule of self-interest and human passion. But the eternal laws of nature and of order exist. For the wise man they take the place of positive law; they are written in the depths of his heart by conscience and reason. Let him obey these laws and be free; only those who do wrong are slaves, for they always do wrong against their will. Liberty is not to be found in any form of government. It is in the heart of the free man; he carries it with him everywhere. The evil man carries his servitude in himself. The latter would be a slave in Geneva, the former a free man in Paris.
[1720:] "If I spoke to you of the duties of a citizen, you would perhaps ask me where a true homeland is, and you would think you had turned the tables on me. Yet you would be mistaken, dear Emile, for he who has no country has, at least, the land in which he lives. There is always a government and certain so-called laws under which he has lived in peace. Even if the social contract has not been observed, of what importance is it so long as individual interest has protected him like the general will would have done, if he has been secured by public violence against private aggressions, if the evil he has seen has taught him to love the good, and if our institutions themselves have made him perceive and hate their own iniquities? Oh, Emile, where is the man who owes nothing to the land in which he lives? Whatever that land may be, he owes to it the most precious thing possessed by man, the morality of his actions and the love of virtue. Born in the depths of a forest he would have lived in greater happiness and freedom; but being able to follow his inclinations without a struggle there would have been no merit in his goodness, he would not have been virtuous, as he may be now, in spite of his passions. The mere sight of order teaches him to know and love it. The public good, which to others is a mere pretext, is a real motive for him. He learns to fight against himself and to prevail, to sacrifice his own self interest to the common interest. It is not true that he gains nothing from the laws; they give him courage to be just, even in the midst of the wicked. It is not true that they have failed to make him free: they have taught him to rule himself.
[1721:] "Do not say therefore, 'What difference does it make where I am?' It does make a difference that you should be where you can best do your duty; and one of these duties is to love your native land. Your fellow countrymen protected you in childhood; you should love them in your manhood. You should live among them, or at least you should be where you can serve them to the best of your power and where they know where to find you if ever they are in need of you. There are circumstances in which a man may be of more use to his fellow-countrymen outside his country than within it. Then he should listen only to his own zeal and should bear his exile without a murmur; that exile is one of his duties. But you, dear Emile, you have not undertaken the painful task of telling men the truth. You must live in the midst of your fellow-creatures, cultivating their friendship in pleasant intercourse; you must be their benefactor, their pattern. Your example will do more than all our books, and the good they see you do will touch them more deeply than all our empty words.
[1722:] "Yet I do not exhort you to live in the city. On the contrary, one of the examples which the good should give to others is that of a patriarchal, rural life, the earliest life of man, the most peaceful, the most natural, and the most attractive to the uncorrupted heart. Happy is the country, my young friend, where one need not seek peace in the wilderness! But where is that country? A man of good will finds it hard to satisfy his inclinations in the midst of cities, where he can find few but frauds and fools to work for. The welcome given by cities to those idlers who flock to them to seek their fortunes only completes the ruin of the country, when the country ought really to be repopulated at the cost of the cities. All the men who withdraw from high society are useful just because of their withdrawal, since its vices are the result of its numbers. They are also useful when they can bring life, culture, and the love of their first condition with them into the rural areas. I like to think what benefits Emile and Sophie, in their simple home, may spread about them, what a stimulus they may give to the country, how they may revive the zeal of the unlucky villagers. I imagine seeing the population increasing, the land coming under cultivation, the earth clothed with fresh beauty, many workers and plenteous crops transforming fieldwork into festivities, cries of joy and blessings rising from the midst of the rustic games that the lovable couple has revived. Men say the golden age is a fable. It always will be for those whose feelings and taste are depraved. People do not really regret the golden age, for they do nothing to restore it. What is needed for its restoration? One thing only, and that is an impossibility; we must love the golden age.
[1723:] "Already it seems to be reviving around Sophie's home; together you will only complete what her worthy parents have begun. But, dear Emile, you must not let so pleasant a life give you a distaste for sterner duties if ever they are laid upon you. Remember that the Romans sometimes left the plough to become consul. If the prince or the state calls you to the service of your country, leave all to fulfil the honourable duties of a citizen in the post assigned to you. If you find that duty onerous, there is a sure and honourable means of escaping from it: do your duty so honestly that it will not long be left in your hands. Moreover, you need not fear the difficulties of such a test; while there are men of our own time, they will not summon you to serve the state."
[1724:] Why may I not paint the return of Emile to Sophie and the end of their love, or rather the beginning of their wedded love! A love founded on esteem which will last with life itself, on virtues which will not fade with fading beauty, on fitness of character which gives a charm to intercourse, and prolongs to old age the delights of early love. But all such details would be pleasing without being useful, and so far I have not permitted myself to give pleasing details unless I thought they would be useful. Will I abandon this rule when my task is nearly ended? No, I feel that my pen is weary. Too feeble for such prolonged labors, I would abandon this if it were not so nearly completed; if it is not to be left imperfect it is time it were finished.
[1725:] At last I see the happy day approaching, the happiest day of Emile's life and my own. I see the crown of my labors; I begin to appreciate their results. The noble pair are united by an unbreakable chain; heart and lips confirm vows that will never be in vain. They are man and wife. When they return from the church, they follow where they are led; they know not where they are, where they are going, or what is happening around them. They hear nothing, they answer at random; their eyes are troubled and they see nothing. Oh, rapture! Oh, human weakness! The feeling of happiness overwhelms man; he is not strong enough to bear it.
[1726:] There are few people who know how to talk to the newly-married couple. The gloomy propriety of some and the light conversation of others seem to me equally out of place. I would rather their young hearts were left to themselves, to abandon themselves to an agitation which is not without its charm, rather than that they should be so cruelly distressed by a false modesty or annoyed by coarse witticisms which, even if they appealed to them at other times, are surely out of place on such a day.
[1727:] I see our young people, wrapped in a pleasant languor, paying no attention to what is said. Will I, who desire that they should enjoy all the days of their life, let them lose this precious day? No, I desire that they shall taste its pleasures and enjoy them. I rescue them from the foolish crowd, and walk with them in some quiet place; I recall them to themselves by speaking of them. It is not merely to their ears, but to their hearts that I wish to spead and I know that there is only one subject of which they can think to-day.
[1728:] "My children," say I, taking a hand of each, "it is three years since I saw the birth of the pure and vigorous passion which is your happiness today. It has gone on growing; your eyes tell me that it has reached its highest point; it must inevitably decline." My readers can imagine the outbreaks, the anger, the vows of Emile, and the scornful air with which Sophie withdraws her hand from mine; how their eyes protest that they will adore each other till their latest breath. I let them have their way; then I continue.
[1729:] "I have often thought that if the happiness of love could continue in marriage, we would find a Paradise upon earth. So far this has never been. But if it were not quite impossible, you two are quite worthy to set an example you have not received, an example which few married couples could follow. My children, shall I tell you what I think is the way, and the only way, to do it?"
[1730:] They look at one another and smile at my simplicity. Emile thanks me curtly for my prescription, saying that he thinks Sophie has a better one, at any rate it is good enough for him. Sophie agrees with him and seems just as certain. Yet in spite of her mockery, I think I see a trace of curiosity. I study Emile; his eager eyes are fixed upon his wife's beauty; he has no curiosity for anything else; and he pays little attention to what I say. It is my turn to smile, and I say to myself, "I will soon get your attention."
[1731:] The almost imperceptible difference between these two hidden impulses is characteristic of a real difference between the two sexes; it is that men are generally less constant than women, and are sooner weary of success in love. A woman foresees man's future inconstancy, and is anxious; it is this which makes her more jealous. When his passion begins to cool she is compelled to pay him the attentions he used to bestow on her for her pleasure. She weeps; it is her turn to humiliate herself, and she is rarely successful. Affection and kind deeds rarely win hearts, and they hardly ever win them back. I return to my prescription against the cooling of love in marriage.
[1732:] "It is plain and simple," I continue. "It consists in remaining lovers when you are husband and wife." "Indeed," said Emile, laughing at my secret, "we shall not find that hard."
[1733:] "Perhaps you will find it harder than you think. Please give me time to explain. Ties that we pull on too tightly are soon broken. This is what happens when the marriage bond is subjected to too great a strain. The fidelity imposed by it upon husband and wife is the most sacred of all rights; but it gives to each too great a power over the other. Constraint and love do not go together, and pleasure is not to be had for the asking. Do not blush, Sophie, and do not try to run away. God forbid that I should offend your modesty! But your fate for life is at stake. For so great a cause, permit a conversation between your husband and your father which you would not permit elsewhere.
[1734:] "It is not so much possession as mastery that people tire of, and affection is often more prolonged with regard to a mistress than a wife. How can people make the tenderest caresses into a duty, and the sweetest pledges of love into a right? It is mutual desire which creates the right, and nature knows no other. The law may restrict this right, but it cannot extend it. The pleasure is so sweet in itself! Should it owe to compulsion the force which it cannot gain from its own charms? No, my children, in marriage the hearts are bound, but the bodies are not enslaved. You owe one another fidelity, but not resignation. Neither of you may give yourself to another, but neither of you belongs to the other except at your own will.
[1735:] "If it is true, dear Emile, that you want to be your wife's lover, that she should always be your mistress and her own, then be a happy but respectful lover. Obtain everything from love and nothing from duty, and let the slightest favors never be of right but of grace. I know that modesty shuns formal confessions and requires to be overcome; but with delicacy and true love, will the lover ever be mistaken as to the real will? Won't he know it when heart and eyes grant what the lips refuse? May each of two lovers always be master of their person and their caresses; let them have the right to bestow them only at their own will. Remember that even in marriage this pleasure is only lawful when the desire is mutual. Do not be afraid, my children, that this law will keep you apart; on the contrary, it will make both more eager to please, and will prevent satiety. Be true to one another, nature and love will draw you to each other."
[1736:] At these and similar suggestions, Emile gets angry and begins to protest. Sophie is ashamed, she hides her face behind her fan and says nothing. Perhaps while she is saying nothing, she is the most annoyed. Yet I insist, without mercy. I make Emile blush for his lack of delicacy. I undertake to be surety for Sophie that she will undertake her share of the treaty. I provoke her to speak; you may guess that she will not dare to refute me. Emile anxiously consults the eyes of his young wife; he sees them, through all her confusion, filled with a voluptuous anxiety that reassures him against the dangers of trusting her. He flings himself at her feet, kisses with rapture the hand extended to him, and swears that beyond the fidelity he has already promised, he will renounce all other rights over her. "My dear wife," he says, "be the arbiter of my pleasures like you are already the arbiter of my days and my destiny. Even if your cruelty costs me my life I give over to you my most cherished rights. I wish to owe nothing to your acquiescence, but all to your heart."
[1737:] Dear Emile, be comforted; Sophie herself is too generous to let you fall a victim to your generosity.
[1738:] In the evening, when I am about to leave them, I say in the most solemn tone, "Remember both of you, that you are free, that there is no question of spousal rights; believe me, no false deference. Emile will you come home with me? Sophie permits it." Emile in a fury is ready to hit me. "And you, Sophie, what do you say? Shall I take him away?" The little liar, blushing, answers, "Yes." A charming and sweet lie, better than the truth!
[1739:] The next day. . . Men no longer delight in the picture of bliss; their taste is as much depraved by the corruption of vice as their hearts. They can no longer feel what is touching or perceive what is truly delightful. You who, as a picture of voluptuous joys, see only the happy lovers immersed in pleasure, your picture is very imperfect; you have only its grosser part, the sweetest charms of pleasure are not there. Which of you has seen a young couple, happily married, on the day after their marriage?.Their chaste yet languid looks betray the intoxication of the bliss they have enjoyed, the blessed security of innocence, and the delightful certainty that they will spend the rest of their life together. The heart of man can be offered no more rapturous sight; this is the real picture of happiness. You have seen it a hundred times without recognizing it; your hearts are so hard that you cannot love it. Sophie, peaceful and happy, spends the day in the arms of her tender mother; a pleasant resting place after a night spent in the arms of her husband.
[1740:] The day after I am aware of a slight change. Emile tries to look somewhat vexed; but through this pretence I notice such a tender eagerness, and indeed so much submission, that I do not think there is much amiss. As for Sophie she is gayer than she was yesterday; her eyes are sparkling and she looks very well pleased with herself. She is charming to Emile; she ventures to tease him a little and vexes him still more.
[1741:] These changes are almost imperceptible, but they do not escape me. I am anxious and I question Emile in private, and I learn that, to his great regret, and in spite of all entreaties, he had had to sleep in a separate bed the previous night. That haughty lady had made haste to assert her right. An explanation takes place. Emile complains bitterly, Sophie laughs; but at last, seeing that Emile is really getting angry, she looks at him with eyes full of tenderness and love, and pressing my hand, she only says these two words, but in a tone that goes to his heart, "Ungrateful man!" Emile is too stupid to understand. But I understand, and I send Emile away and speak to Sophie privately in her turn.
[1742:] "I see," said I, " the reason for this whim. No one could be more delicate, and no one could use that delicacy so inappropriately. Dear Sophie, do not be anxious. I have given you a man; do not be afraid to treat him as such. You have had the first fruits of his youth; he has not squandered his manhood on anyone else, and he will preserve it a long time for you.
[1743:] "My dear child, I must explain to you why I said what I did in our conversation of the day before yesterday. Perhaps you only understood it as a way of restraining your pleasures to secure their continuance. But, Sophie, there was another purpose, more worthy of my concerns. When Emile became your husband, he became your head. It is for you to obey; this is what nature wishes. When the wife is like Sophie, it is nevertheless good for the man to be led by her. That is another of nature's laws; and it is to give you as much authority over his heart as his sex gives him over your person that I have made you the arbiter of his pleasures. It will be hard for you, but you will control him if you can control yourself, and what has already happened shows me that this difficult art is not beyond your courage. You will long rule him by love if you make your favours scarce and precious, if you know how to give them value. Do you want to have your husband always at your feet? Keep him at a distance. But let your sternness be the result of modesty not whim; let him find you modest not capricious. Beware that in controlling his love you do not make him doubt your own. Make yourself cherished for your favors and all the more respected for your refusals; let him honor his wife's chastity without having to complain of her coldness.
[1744:] "It is thus, my child, that he will give you his confidence, he will listen to your opinion, will consult you in his business, and will decide nothing without you. It is thus that you may lead him back to wisdom when he strays, and by gentle persuasion make yourself lovable in order to be useful. It is thus that you can use coquetry in the interest of virtue, and love to the profit of reason.
[1745:] "Do not think that with all this your art will always serve your purpose. In spite of every precaution pleasures are destroyed by possession, and love above all others. But when love has lasted long enough, a gentle habit takes its place and the charm of confidence succeeds the raptures of passion. Children form a bond between their parents, a bond no less tender and a bond which is sometimes stronger than love itself. When you cease to be Emile's mistress you will be his friend and wife; you will be the mother of his children. Then instead of your first reticence let there be the fullest intimacy between you. No more separate beds, no more refusals, no more caprices. Become so truly his better half that he can no longer do without you, and if he must leave you, let him feel that he is far from himself. You have made the charms of home life so powerful in your father's home, let them prevail in your own. Every man who is happy at home loves his wife. Remember that if your husband is happy in his home, you will be a happy wife.
[1746:] "For the present, do not be too hard on your lover. He deserves more consideration; he will be offended by your fears. Do not be concerned for his health at the cost of his happiness, and enjoy your own happiness. You must neither anticipate disgust nor repulse desire; you must not refuse for the sake of refusing but only to add to the value of your favors."
[1747:] Then, taking her back to Emile, I say to her young husband, "One must bear the yoke that one has imposed upon oneself. Make yourselves merit the lightening of that yoke. Above all, honor the graces, and do not think that sulkiness will make you more lovable." Peace is soon made, and everybody can guess its terms. The treaty is signed with a kiss, after which I say to my pupil, "Dear Emile, all his life through a man needs a guide and counsellor. So far I have done my best to fulfil that duty; my lengthy task is now ended, and another will undertake this duty. Today I abdicate the authority which you gave me; from now on Sophie is your guardian."
[1748:] Little by little the first raptures subside and they can peacefully enjoy the delights of their new condition. Happy lovers, worthy husband and wife! To do honor to their virtues, to paint their felicity, would require the history of their lives. How many times, while contemplating in them my life's work, I feel myself seized with a delight that makes my heart beat with joy! How often I take their hands in mine, blessing providence and letting out ardent sighs! How often I kiss their clasped hands! How often their tears of joy fall upon mine! They are touched by my joy and they share my raptures. Their worthy parents see their own youth renewed in that of their children; they begin to live, as it were, afresh in them; or rather they perceive, for the first time, the true value of life. They curse their former wealth, which prevented them from enjoying so charming a fate when they were young. If there is such a thing as happiness upon earth, it is in our home that one must seek it.
[1749:] One morning a few months later Emile enters my room and embraces me, saying, "My teacher, congratulate your child; he hopes soon to have the honor of being a father. What a responsibility we will have, how much we will need you! Yet God forbid that I should let you educate the son after having educated the father. God forbid that so sweet and holy a task should be fulfilled by any but myself, even if I were able to make as good a choice for my child as was made for me! But continue to be the teacher of the young teachers. Counsel us, govern us. We will be easily led; as long as I live I will need you. I need you more than ever now that my functions as a man begin. You have fulfilled your own function; help me to follow your example. And now it is time for you to take a rest."