M. Jules Steeg has rendered a real service to French and American teachers by his judicious selections from Rousseau's Émile. For the three-volume novel of a hundred years ago, with its long disquisitions and digressions, so dear to the heart of our patient ancestors, is now distasteful to all but lovers of the curious in books.
"Émile" is like an antique mirror of brass; it reflects the features of educational humanity no less faithfully than one of more modern construction. In these few pages will be found the germ of all that is useful in present systems of education, as well as most of the ever-recurring mistakes of well-meaning zealots.
The eighteenth century translations of this wonderful book have for many readers the disadvantage of an English style long disused. It is hoped that this attempt at a new translation may, with all its defects, have the one merit of being in the dialect of the nineteenth century, and may thus reach a wider circle of readers.
Jean Jacques Rousseau's book on education has had a powerful influence throughout Europe, and even in the New World. It was in its day a kind of gospel. It had its share in bringing about the Revolution which renovated the entire aspect of our country. Many of the reforms so lauded by it have since then been carried into effect, and at this day seem every-day affairs. In the eighteenth century they were unheard-of daring; they were mere dreams.
Long before that time the immortal satirist Rabelais, and, after him, Michael Montaigne, had already divined the truth, had pointed out serious defects in education, and the way to reform. No one followed out their suggestions, or even gave them a hearing. Routine went on its way. Exercises of memory,—the science that consists of mere words,—pedantry, barren and vain-glorious,—held fast their "bad eminence." The child was treated as a machine, or as a man in miniature, no account being taken of his nature or of his real needs; without any greater solicitude about reasonable method—the hygiene of mind—than about the hygiene of the body.
Rousseau, who had educated himself, and very badly at that, was impressed with the dangers of the education of his day. A mother having asked his advice, he took up the pen to write it; and, little by little, his counsels grew into a book, a large work, a pedagogic romance.
This romance, when it appeared in 1762, created a great noise and a great scandal. The Archbishop of Paris, Christophe de Beaumont, saw in it a dangerous, mischievous work, and gave himself the trouble of writing a long encyclical letter in order to point out the book to the reprobation of the faithful. This document of twenty-seven chapters is a formal refutation of the theories advanced in "Émile."
The archbishop declares that the plan of education proposed by the author, "far from being in accordance with Christianity, is not fitted to form citizens, or even men." He accuses Rousseau of irreligion and of bad faith; he denounces him to the temporal power as animated "by a spirit of insubordination and of revolt." He sums up by solemnly condemning the book "as containing an abominable doctrine, calculated to overthrow natural law, and to destroy the foundations of the Christian religion; establishing maxims contrary to Gospel morality; having a tendency to disturb the peace of empires, to stir up subjects to revolt against their sovereign; as containing a great number of propositions respectively false, scandalous, full of hatred toward the Church and its ministers, derogating from the respect due to Holy Scripture and the traditions of the Church, erroneous, impious, blasphemous, and heretical."
In those days, such a condemnation was a serious matter; its consequences to an author might be terrible. Rousseau had barely time to flee. His arrest was decreed by the parliament of Paris, and his book was burned by the executioner. A few years before this, the author would have run the risk of being burned with his book.
As a fugitive, Rousseau did not find a safe retreat even in his own country. He was obliged to leave Geneva, where his book was also condemned, and Berne, where he had sought refuge, but whence he was driven by intolerance. He owed it to the protection of Lord Keith, governor of Neufchâtel, a principality belonging to the King of Prussia, that he lived for some time in peace in the little town of Motiers in the Val de Travera.
It was from this place that he replied to the archbishop of Paris by an apology, a long-winded work in which he repels, one after another, the imputations of his accuser, and sets forth anew with greater urgency his philosophical and religious principles. This work, written on a rather confused plan but with impassioned eloquence, manifests a lofty and sincere spirit. It is said that the archbishop was deeply touched by it, and never afterward spoke of the author of "Émile" without extreme reserve, sometimes even eulogizing his character and his virtues.
The renown of the book, condemned by so high an authority, was immense. Scandal, by attracting public attention to it, did it good service. What was most serious and most suggestive in it was not, perhaps, seized upon; but the "craze" of which it was the object had, notwithstanding, good results. Mothers were won over, and resolved to nurse their own infants; great lords began to learn handicrafts, like Rousseau's imaginary pupil; physical exercises came into fashion; the spirit of innovation was forcing itself a way.
It was not among ourselves, however, that the theories of Rousseau were most eagerly experimented upon; it was among foreigners, in Germany, in Switzerland, that they found more resolute partisans, and a field more ready to receive them.
Three men above all the rest are noted for having popularized the pedagogic method of Rousseau, and for having been inspired in their labors by "Émile." These were Basedow, Pestalozzi, and Froebel.
Basedow, a German theologian, had devoted himself entirely to dogmatic controversy, until the reading of "Émile" had the effect of enlarging his mental horizon, and of revealing to him his true vocation. He wrote important books to show how Rousseau's method could be applied in different departments of instruction, and founded at Dessau, in 1774, an institution to bring that method within the domain of experience.
This institution, to which he gave the name of "Philanthropinum," was secular in the true sense of the word; and at that time this was in itself a novelty. It was open to pupils of every belief and every nationality, and proposed to render study easy, pleasant, and expeditious to them, by following the directions of nature itself. In the first rank of his disciples may be placed Campe, who succeeded him in the management of the Philanthropinum.
Pestalozzi of Zürich, one of the foremost educators of modern times, also found his whole life transformed by the reading of "Émile," which awoke in him the genius of a reformer. He himself also, in 1775, founded a school, in order to put in practice there his progressive and professional method of teaching, which was a fruitful development of seeds sown by Rousseau in his book. Pestalozzi left numerous writings,—romances, treatises, reviews,—all having for sole object the popularization of his ideas and processes of education. The most distinguished among his disciples and continuators is Froebel, the founder of those primary schools or asylums known by the name of "kindergartens," and the author of highly esteemed pedagogic works.
These various attempts, these new and ingenious processes which, step by step, have made their way among us, and are beginning to make their workings felt, even in institutions most stoutly opposed to progress, are all traceable to Rousseau's "Émile."
It is therefore not too much for Frenchmen, for teachers, for parents, for every one in our country who is interested in what concerns teaching, to go back to the source of so great a movement.
It is true that "Émile" contains pages that have outlived their day, many odd precepts, many false ideas, many disputable and destructive theories; but at the same time we find in it so many sagacious observations, such upright counsels, suitable even to modern times, so lofty an ideal, that, in spite of everything, we cannot read and study it without profit. There is no one who does not know the book by name and by reputation; but how many parents, and even teachers, have never read it!
This is because a large part of the book is no longer in accordance with the actual condition of things; because its very plan, its fundamental idea, are outside of the truth. We are obliged to exercise judgment, to make selections. Some of it must be taken, some left untouched. This is what we have done in the present edition.
We have not, indeed, the presumption to correct Rousseau, or to substitute an expurgated "Émile" for the authentic "Émile." We have simply wished to draw the attention of the teachers of childhood to those pages of this book which have least grown old, which can still be of service, can hasten the downfall of the old systems, can emphasize, by their energy and beauty of language, methods already inaugurated and reforms already undertaken. These methods and reforms cannot be too often recommended and set in a clear light. We have desired to call to the rescue this powerful and impassioned writer, who brings to bear upon every subject he approaches the magical attractiveness of his style.
There is absolutely nothing practicable in his system. It consists in isolating a child from the rest of the world; in creating expressly for him a tutor, who is a phoenix among his kind; in depriving him of father, mother, brothers, and sisters, his companions in study; in surrounding him with a perpetual charlatanism, under the pretext of following nature; and in showing him only through the veil of a factitious atmosphere the society in which he is to live. And, nevertheless, at each step it is sound reason by which we are met; by an astonishing paradox, this whimsicality is full of good sense; this dream overflows with realities; this improbable and chimerical romance contains the substance and the marrow of a rational and truly modern treatise on pedagogy. Sometimes we must read between the lines, add what experience has taught us since that day, transpose into an atmosphere of open democracy these pages, written under the old order of things, but even then quivering with the new world which they were bringing to light, and for which they prepared the way.
Reading "Émile" in the light of modern prejudices, we can see in it more than the author wittingly put into it; but not more than logic and the instinct of genius set down there.
To unfold the powers of children in due proportion to their age; not to transcend their ability; to arouse in them the sense of the observer and of the pioneer; to make them discoverers rather than imitators; to teach them accountability to themselves and not slavish dependence upon the words of others; to address ourselves more to the will than to custom, to the reason rather than to the memory; to substitute for verbal recitations lessons about things; to lead to theory by way of art; to assign to physical movements and exercises a prominent place, from the earliest hours of life up to perfect maturity; such are the principles scattered broadcast in this book, and forming a happy counterpoise to the oddities of which Rousseau was perhaps most proud.
He takes the child in its cradle, almost before its birth; he desires that mothers should fulfil the sacred duty of nursing them at the breast. If there must be a nurse, he knows how to choose her, how she ought to be treated, how she should be fed. He watches over the movements of the new-born child, over its first playthings. All these counsels bear the stamp of good sense and of experience; or, rather, they result from a power of divination singular enough in a man who was not willing to take care of his own children. In this way, day by day, he follows up the physical and moral development of the little being, all whose ideas and feelings he analyzes, whom he guides with wisdom and with tact throughout the mazes of a life made up of convention and artifice.
We have carefully avoided suppressing the fictions of the gardener and of the mountebank; because they are characteristic of his manner, and because, after all, these pre-arranged scenes which, as they stand, are anything in the world rather than real teaching, contain, nevertheless, right notions, and opinions which may suggest to intelligent teachers processes in prudent education. Such teachers will not copy the form; they will not imitate the awkward clap-trap; but, yielding to the inspiration of the dominant idea, they will, in a way more in accordance with nature, manage to thrill with life the teaching of facts, and will aid the mind in giving birth to its ideas. This is the old method of Socrates, the eternal method of reason, the only method which really educates.
We have brought this volume to an end with the third book of "Émile." The fourth and fifth books which follow are not within the domain of pedagogy. They contain admirable pages, which ought to be read; which occupy one of the foremost places in our literature; which deal with philosophy, with ethics, with theology; but they concern themselves with the manner of directing young men and women, and no longer with childhood. The author conducts his Émile even as far as to his betrothal; he devotes an entire book to the betrothed herself, Sophie, and closes his volume only after he has united them in marriage.
We will not go so far. We will leave Émile upon the confines of youth, at the time when he escapes from school, and when he is about beginning to feel that he is a man. At this difficult and critical period the teacher no longer suffices. Then, above all things, is needed all the influence of the family; the father's example, the mother's clear-sighted tenderness, worthy friendships, an environment of meritorious people, of upright minds animated by lofty ideas, who attract within their orbit this ardent and inquisitive being, eager for novelty, for action, and for independence.
Artifices and stratagems are then no longer good for anything; they are very soon laid open to the light. All that can be required of a teacher is that he shall have furnished his pupils with a sound and strong education, drawn from the sources of reason, experience, and nature; that he shall have prepared them to learn to form judgments, to make use of their faculties, to enter valiantly upon study and upon life. It seems to us that the pages of Rousseau here published may be a useful guide in the pursuit of such a result.
JULES STEEG.
The first book, after some general remarks upon education, treats especially of early infancy; of the first years of life; of the care to be bestowed upon very young children; of the nursing of them, of the laws of health.
He makes education begin at birth; expresses himself on the subject of the habits to be given or to be avoided; discusses the use and meaning of tears, outcries, gestures, also the language that should be used with young children, so that, from their tenderest years, the inculcating of false ideas and the giving a wrong bent of mind may be avoided.
Coming from the hand of the Author of all things, everything is good; in the hands of man, everything degenerates. Man obliges one soil to nourish the productions of another, one tree to bear the fruits of another; he mingles and confounds climates, elements, seasons; he mutilates his dog, his horse, his slave. He overturns everything, disfigures everything; he loves deformity, monsters; he desires that nothing should be as nature made it, not even man himself. To please him, man must be broken in like a horse; man must be adapted to man's own fashion, like a tree in his garden.[1]
Were it not for all this, matters would be still worse. No one wishes to be a half-developed being; and in the present condition of things, a man left to himself among others from his birth would be the most deformed among them all. Prejudices, authority, necessities, example, all the social institutions in which we are submerged, would stifle nature in him, and would put nothing in its place. In such a man nature would be like a shrub sprung up by chance in the midst of a highway, and jostled from all sides, bent in every direction, by the passers-by.
Plants are improved by cultivation, and men by education. If man were born large and strong, his size and strength would be useless to him until he had learned to use them. They would be prejudicial to him, by preventing others from thinking of assisting him; and left to himself he would die of wretchedness before he had known his own necessities. We pity the state of infancy; we do not perceive that the human race would have perished if man had not begun by being a child.
We are born weak, we need strength; we are born destitute of all things, we need assistance; we are born stupid, we need judgment. All that we have not at our birth, and that we need when grown up, is given us by education.
This education comes to us from nature itself, or from other men, or from circumstances. The internal development of our faculties and of our organs is the education nature gives us; the use we are taught to make of this development is the education we get from other men; and what we learn, by our own experience, about things that interest as, is the education of circumstances.
Each of us is therefore formed by three kinds of teachers. The pupil in whom their different lessons contradict one another is badly educated, and will never be in harmony with himself; the one in whom they all touch upon the same points and tend toward the same object advances toward that goal only, and lives accordingly. He alone is well educated.
Now of these three different educations, that of nature does not depend upon us; that of circumstances depends upon us only in certain respects; that of men is the only one of which we are really masters, and that solely because we think we are. For who can hope to direct entirely the speech and conduct of all who surround a child?
As soon, therefore, as education becomes an art, its success is almost impossible, since the agreement of circumstances necessary to this success is independent of personal effort. All that the utmost care can do is to approach more or less nearly our object; but, for attaining it, special good fortune is needed.
What is this object? That of nature itself, as has just been proved. Since the agreement of the three educations is necessary to their perfection, it is toward the one for which we ourselves can do nothing that we must direct both the others. But perhaps this word "nature" has too vague a meaning; we must here try to define it.
In the natural order of things, all men being equal, the vocation common to all is the state of manhood; and whoever is well trained for that, cannot fulfil badly any vocation which depends upon it. Whether my pupil be destined for the army, the church, or the bar, matters little to me. Before he can think of adopting the vocation of his parents, nature calls upon him to be a man. How to live is the business I wish to teach him. On leaving my hands he will not, I admit, be a magistrate, a soldier, or a priest; first of all he will be a man. All that a man ought to be he can be, at need, as well as any one else can. Fortune will in vain alter his position, for he will always occupy his own.
Our real study is that of the state of man. He among us who best knows how to bear the good and evil fortunes of this life is, in my opinion, the best educated; whence it follows that true education consists less in precept than in practice. We begin to instruct ourselves when we begin to live; our education commences with the commencement of our life; our first teacher is our nurse. For this reason the word "education" had among the ancients another meaning which we no longer attach to it; it signified nutriment.
We must then take a broader view of things, and consider in our pupil man in the abstract, man exposed to all the accidents of human life. If man were born attached to the soil of a country, if the same season continued throughout the year, if every one held his fortune by such a tenure that he could never change it, the established customs of to-day would be in certain respects good. The child educated for his position, and never leaving it, could not be exposed to the inconveniences of another.
But seeing that human affairs are changeable, seeing the restless and disturbing spirit of this century, which overturns everything once in a generation, can a more senseless method be imagined than to educate a child as if he were never to leave his room, as if he were obliged to be constantly surrounded by his servants? If the poor creature takes but one step on the earth, if he comes down so much as one stair, he is ruined. This is not teaching him to endure pain; it is training him to feel it more keenly.
We think only of preserving the child: this is not enough. We ought to teach him to preserve himself when he is a man; to bear the blows of fate; to brave both wealth and wretchedness; to live, if need be, among the snows of Iceland or upon the burning rock of Malta. In vain you take precautions against his dying,—he must die after all; and if his death be not indeed the result of those very precautions, they are none the less mistaken. It is less important to keep him from dying than it is to teach him how to live. To live is not merely to breathe, it is to act. It is to make use of our organs, of our senses, of our faculties, of all the powers which bear witness to us of our own existence. He who has lived most is not he who has numbered the most years, but he who has been most truly conscious of what life is. A man may have himself buried at the age of a hundred years, who died from the hour of his birth. He would have gained something by going to his grave in youth, if up to that time he had only lived.
The new-born child needs to stretch and to move his limbs so as to draw them out of the torpor in which, rolled into a ball, they have so long remained. We do stretch his limbs, it is true, but we prevent him from moving them. We even constrain his head into a baby's cap. It seems as if we were afraid he might appear to be alive. The inaction, the constraint in which we keep his limbs, cannot fail to interfere with the circulation of the blood and of the secretions, to prevent the child from growing strong and sturdy, and to change his constitution. In regions where these extravagant precautions are not taken, the men are all large, strong, and well proportioned. Countries in which children are swaddled swarm with hunchbacks, with cripples, with persons crook-kneed, stunted, rickety, deformed in all kinds of ways. For fear that the bodies of children may be deformed by free movements, we hasten to deform them by putting them into a press. Of our own accord we cripple them to prevent their laming themselves.
Must not such a cruel constraint have an influence upon their temper as well as upon their constitution? Their first feeling is a feeling of constraint and of suffering. To all their necessary movements they find only obstacles. More unfortunate than chained criminals, they make fruitless efforts, they fret themselves, they cry. Do you tell me that the first sounds they make are cries? I can well believe it; you thwart them from the time they are born. The first gifts they receive from you are chains, the first treatment they undergo is torment. Having nothing free but the voice, why should they not use it in complaints? They cry on account of the suffering you cause them; if you were pinioned in the same way, your own cries would be louder.
Whence arises this unreasonable custom of swaddling children? From an unnatural custom. Since the time when mothers, despising their first duty, no longer wish to nurse their own children at the breast, it has been necessary to intrust the little ones to hired women. These, finding themselves in this way the mothers of strange children, concerning whom the voice of nature is silent to them, seek only to spare themselves annoyance. A child at liberty would require incessant watching; but after he is well swaddled, they throw him into a corner without troubling themselves at all on account of his cries. Provided there are no proofs of the nurse's carelessness, provided that the nursling does not break his legs or his arms, what does it matter, after all, that he is pining away, or that he continues feeble for the rest of his life? His limbs are preserved at the expense of his life, and whatever happens, the nurse is held free from blame.
It is pretended that children, when left free, may put themselves into bad positions, and make movements liable to injure the proper conformation of their limbs. This is one of the weak arguments of our false wisdom, which no experience has ever confirmed. Of that multitude of children who, among nations more sensible than ourselves, are brought up in the full freedom of their limbs, not one is seen to wound or lame himself. They cannot give their movements force enough to make them dangerous; and when they assume a hurtful position, pain soon warns them to change it.
We have not yet brought ourselves to the point of swaddling puppies or kittens; do we see that any inconvenience results to them from this negligence? Children are heavier, indeed; but in proportion they are weaker. They can scarcely move themselves at all; how can they lame themselves? If laid upon the back they would die in that position, like the tortoise, without being able ever to turn themselves again.
[This want of intelligence In the care bestowed upon young children is seen particularly in those mothers who give themselves no concern about their own, do not themselves nurse them, intrust them to hireling nurses. This custom is fatal to all; first to the children and finally to families, where barrenness becomes the rule, where woman sacrifices to her own convenience the joys and the duties of motherhood.]
Would you recall every one to his highest duties? Begin with the mothers; you will be astonished at the changes you will effect. From this first depravity all others come in succession. The entire moral order is changed; natural feeling is extinguished in all hearts. Within our homes there is less cheerfulness; the touching sight of a growing family no longer attaches the husband or attracts the attention of strangers. The mother whose children are not seen is less respected. There is no such thing as a family living together; habit no longer strengthens the ties of blood. There are no longer fathers and mothers and children and brothers and sisters. They all scarcely know one another; how then should they love one another? Each one thinks only of himself. When home is a melancholy, lonely place, we must indeed go elsewhere to enjoy ourselves.
But let mothers only vouchsafe to nourish their children,[2] and our manners will reform themselves; the feelings of nature will re-awaken in all hearts. The State will be repeopled; this chief thing, this one thing will bring all the rest into order again. The attractions of home life present the best antidote to bad morals. The bustling life of little children, considered so tiresome, becomes pleasant; it makes the father and the mother more necessary to one another, more dear to one another; it draws closer between them the conjugal tie. When the family is sprightly and animated, domestic cares form the dearest occupation of the wife and the sweetest recreation of the husband. Thus the correction of this one abuse would soon result in a general reform; nature would resume all her rights. When women are once more true mothers, men will become true fathers and husbands.
If mothers are not real mothers, children are not real children toward them. Their duties to one another are reciprocal, and if these be badly fulfilled on the one side, they will be neglected on the other side. The child ought to love his mother before he knows that it is his duty to love her. If the voice of natural affection be not strengthened by habit and by care, it will grow dumb even in childhood; and thus the heart dies, so to speak, before it is born. Thus from the outset we are beyond the pale of nature.
There is an opposite way by which a woman goes beyond it; that is, when, instead of neglecting a mother's cares, she carries them to excess; when she makes her child her idol. She increases and fosters his weakness to prevent him from feeling it. Hoping to shelter him from the laws of nature, she wards from him shocks of pain. She does not consider how, for the sake of preserving him for a moment from some inconveniences, she is heaping upon his head future accidents and perils; nor how cruel is the caution which prolongs the weakness of childhood in one who must bear the fatigues of a grown-up man. The fable says that, to render her son invulnerable, Thetis plunged him into the Styx. This allegory is beautiful and clear. The cruel mothers of whom I am speaking do far otherwise; by plunging their children into effeminacy they open their pores to ills of every kind, to which, when grown up, they fall a certain prey.
Watch nature carefully, and follow the paths she traces out for you. She gives children continual exercise; she strengthens their constitution by ordeals of every kind; she teaches them early what pain and trouble mean. The cutting of their teeth gives them fever, sharp fits of colic throw them into convulsions, long coughing chokes them, worms torment them, repletion corrupts their blood, different leavens fermenting there cause dangerous eruptions. Nearly the whole of infancy is sickness and danger; half the children born into the world die before their eighth year. These trials past, the child has gained strength, and as soon as he can use life, its principle becomes more assured.
This is the law of nature. Why do you oppose her? Do you not see that in thinking to correct her you destroy her work and counteract the effect of all her cares? In your opinion, to do without what she is doing within is to redouble the danger. On the contrary, it is really to avert, to mitigate that danger. Experience teaches that more children who are delicately reared die than others. Provided we do not exceed the measure of their strength, it is better to employ it than to hoard it. Give them practice, then, in the trials they will one day have to endure. Inure their bodies to the inclemencies of the seasons, of climates, of elements; to hunger, thirst, fatigue; plunge them into the water of the Styx. Before the habits of the body are acquired we can give it such as we please without risk. But when once it has reached its full vigor, any alteration is perilous to its well-being. A child will endure changes which a man could not bear. The fibres of the former, soft and pliable, take without effort the bent we give them; those of man, more hardened, do not without violence change those they have received. We may therefore make a child robust without exposing his life or his health; and even if there were some risk we still ought not to hesitate. Since there are risks inseparable from human life, can we do better than to throw them back upon that period of life when they are least disadvantageous?
A child becomes more precious as he advances in age. To the value of his person is added that of the cares he has cost us; if we lose his life, his own consciousness of death is added to our sense of loss. Above all things, then, in watching over his preservation we must think of the future. We must arm him against the misfortunes of youth before he has reached them. For, if the value of life increases up to the age when life becomes useful, what folly it is to spare the child some troubles, and to heap them upon the age of reason! Are these the counsels of a master?
In all ages suffering is the lot of man. Even to the cares of self-preservation pain is joined. Happy are we, who in childhood are acquainted with only physical misfortunes—misfortunes far less cruel, less painful than others; misfortunes which far more rarely make us renounce life. We do not kill ourselves on account of the pains of gout; seldom do any but those of the mind produce despair.[3]
We pity the lot of infancy, and it is our own lot that we ought to pity. Our greatest misfortunes come to us from ourselves.
At birth a child cries; his earliest infancy is spent in crying. Sometimes he is tossed, he is petted, to appease him; sometimes he is threatened, beaten, to make him keep quiet. We either do as he pleases, or else we exact from him what we please; we either submit to his whims, or make him submit to ours. There is no middle course; he must either give or receive orders. Thus his first ideas are those of absolute rule and of slavery. Before he knows how to speak, he commands; before he is able to act, he obeys; and sometimes he is punished before he knows what his faults are, or rather, before he is capable of committing them. Thus do we early pour into his young heart the passions that are afterward imputed to nature; and, after having taken pains to make him wicked, we complain of finding him wicked.
A child passes six or seven years of his life in this manner in the hands of women, the victim of his own caprice and of theirs. After having made him learn this and that,—after having loaded his memory either with words he cannot understand, or with facts which are of no use to him,—after having stifled his natural disposition by the passions we have created, we put this artificial creature into the hands of a tutor who finishes the development of the artificial germs he finds already formed, and teaches him everything except to know himself, everything except to know how to live and how to make himself happy. Finally, when this enslaved child, this little tyrant, full of learning and devoid of sense, enfeebled alike in mind and body, is cast upon the world, he there by his unfitness, by his pride, and by all his vices, makes us deplore human wretchedness and perversity. We deceive ourselves; this is the man our whims have created. Nature makes men by a different process.
Do you then wish him to preserve his original form? Preserve it from the moment he enters the world. As soon as he is born take possession of him, and do not leave him until he is a man. Without this you will never succeed. As the mother is the true nurse, the father is the true teacher. Let them be of one mind as to the order in which their functions are fulfilled, as well as in regard to their plan; let the child pass from the hands of the one into the hands of the other. He will be better educated by a father who is judicious, even though of moderate attainments, than by the most skilful master in the world. For zeal will supplement talent better than talent can supply what only zeal can give.
A father, when he brings his children into existence and supports them, has, in so doing, fulfilled only a third part of his task. To the human race he owes men; to society, men fitted for society; to the State, citizens. Every man who can pay this triple debt, and does not pay it is a guilty man; and if he pays it by halves, he is perhaps more guilty still. He who cannot fulfil the duties of a father has no right to be a father. Not poverty, nor severe labor, nor human respect can release him from the duty of supporting his children and of educating them himself. Readers, you may believe my words. I prophesy to any one who has natural feeling and neglects these sacred duties,—that he will long shed bitter tears over this fault, and that for those tears he will find no consolation.[4]
[It being supposed that the father is unable or unwilling to charge himself personally with the education of his son, he must charge a third person with it, must seek out a master, a teacher for the child.]
The qualifications of a good tutor are very freely discussed. The first qualification I should require in him, and this one presupposes many others, is, that he shall not be capable of selling himself. There are employments so noble that we cannot fulfil them for money without showing ourselves unworthy to fulfil them. Such an employment is that of a soldier; such a one is that of a teacher. Who, then, shall educate my child? I have told you already,—yourself. I cannot! Then make for yourself a friend who can. I see no other alternative.
A teacher! what a great soul he ought to be! Truly, to form a man, one must be either himself a father, or else something more than human. And this is the office you calmly entrust to hirelings![5]
Children's first impressions are purely those of feeling; they perceive only pleasure and pain. Unable either to move about, or to grasp anything with their hands, they need a great deal of time to form sensations which represent, and so make them aware of objects outside of themselves. But, during all this time, while these objects are extending, and, as it were, receding from their eyes, assuming, to them, form and dimension, the constantly recurring sensations begin to subject the little creatures to the sway of habit. We see their eyes incessantly turning toward the light; and, if it comes to them from one side, unwittingly taking the direction of that side; so that their faces ought to be carefully turned toward the light, lest they become squint-eyed, or accustom themselves to look awry. They should, also, early accustom themselves to darkness, or else they will cry and scream as soon as they are left in the dark. Food and sleep, if too exactly proportioned, become necessary to them after the lapse of the same intervals; and soon the desire arises not from necessity, but from habit. Or rather, habit adds a new want to those of nature, and this must be prevented.
The only habit a child should be allowed to form is to contract no habits whatever. Let him not be carried upon one arm more than upon another; let him not be accustomed to put forth one hand rather than the other, or to use it oftener; nor to desire to eat, to sleep, to act in any way, at regular hours; nor to be unable to stay alone either by night or by day. Prepare long beforehand for the time when he shall freely use all his strength. Do this by leaving his body under the control of its natural bent, by fitting him to be always master of himself, and to carry out his own will in everything as soon as he has a will of his own.
Since the only kinds of objects presented to him are likely to make him either timid or courageous, why should not his education begin before he speaks or understands? I would habituate him to seeing new objects, though they be ugly, repulsive, or singular. But let this be by degrees, and from a distance, until he has become accustomed to them, and, from seeing them handled by others, shall at last handle them himself. If during his infancy he has seen without fear frogs, serpents, crawfishes, he will, when grown up, see without shrinking any animal that may be shown him. For one who daily sees frightful objects, there are none such.
All children are afraid of masks. I begin by showing Émile the mask of a pleasant face. By and by some one puts the mask upon his own face, so that the child can see it. I begin to laugh; every one else laughs, and the child with the rest. By degrees I familiarize him with less comely masks, and finally with really hideous ones. If I have managed the process well, he will, far from being frightened at the last mask, laugh at it as he laughed at the first. After that, I shall not fear his being frightened by any one with a mask.
When, in the farewell scene between Hector and Andromache, the little Astyanax, terrified at the plume floating from a helmet, fails to recognize his father, throws himself, crying, upon his nurse's breast, and wins from his mother a smile bright with tears, what ought to be done to soothe his fear? Precisely what Hector does. He places the helmet on the ground, and then caresses his child. At a more tranquil moment, this should not have been all. They should have drawn near the helmet, played with its plumes, caused the child to handle them. At last the nurse should have lifted the helmet and laughingly set it on her own head—if, indeed, the hand of a woman dared touch the armor of Hector.
If I wish to familiarize Émile with the noise of fire-arms, I first burn some powder in a pistol. The quickly vanishing flame, the new kind of lightning, greatly pleases him. I repeat the process, using more powder. By degrees I put into the pistol a small charge, without ramming it down; then a larger charge; finally, I accustom him to the noise of a gun, to bombs, to cannon-shots, to the most terrific noises.
I have noticed that children are rarely afraid of thunder, unless, indeed, the thunder-claps are so frightful as actually to wound the organ of hearing. Otherwise, they fear it only when they have been taught that thunder sometimes wounds or kills. When reason begins to affright them, let habit reassure them. By a slow and well conducted process the man or the child is rendered fearless of everything.
In this outset of life, while memory and imagination are still inactive, the child pays attention only to what actually affects his senses. The first materials of his knowledge are his sensations. If, therefore, these are presented to him in suitable order, his memory can hereafter present them to his understanding in the same order. But as he attends to his sensations only, it will at first suffice to show him very clearly the connection between these sensations, and the objects which give rise to them. He is eager to touch everything, to handle everything. Do not thwart this restless desire; it suggests to him a very necessary apprenticeship. It is thus he learns to feel the heat and coldness, hardness and softness, heaviness and lightness of bodies; to judge of their size, their shape, and all their sensible qualities, by looking, by touching, by listening; above all, by comparing the results of sight with those of touch, estimating with the eye the sensation a thing produces upon the fingers.
By movement alone we learn the existence of things which are not ourselves; and it is by our own movements alone that we gain the idea of extension.
Because the child has not this idea, he stretches out his hand indifferently to seize an object which touches him, or one which is a hundred paces distant from him. The effort he makes in doing this appears to you a sign of domination, an order he gives the object to come nearer, or to you to bring it to him. It is nothing of the kind. It means only that the object seen first within the brain, then upon the eye, is now seen at arm's length, and that he does not conceive of any distance beyond his reach. Be careful, then, to walk often with him, to transport him from one place to another, to let him feel the change of position, and, in this way to teach him how to judge of distances. When he begins to know them, change the plan; carry him only where it is convenient for you to do so, and not wherever it pleases him. For as soon as he is no longer deceived by the senses, his attempts arise from another cause. This change is remarkable and demands explanation.
The uneasiness arising from our wants expresses itself by signs whenever help in supplying these wants is needed; hence the cries of children. They cry a great deal, and this is natural. Since all their sensations are those of feeling, children enjoy them in silence, when the sensations are pleasant; otherwise they express them in their own language, and ask relief. Now as long as children are awake they cannot be in a state of indifference; they either sleep or are moved by pleasure and pain.
All our languages are the result of art. Whether there is a natural language, common to all mankind, has long been a matter of investigation. Without doubt there is such a language, and it is the one that children utter before they know how to talk. This language is not articulate, but it is accentuated, sonorous, intelligible. The using of our own language has led us to neglect this, even so far as to forget it altogether. Let us study children, and we shall soon acquire it again from them. Nurses are our teachers in this language. They understand all their nurslings say, they answer them, they hold really connected dialogues with them. And, although they pronounce words, these words are entirely useless; the child understands, not the meaning of the words, but the accent which accompanies them.
To the language of the voice is added the no less forcible language of gesture. This gesture is not that of children's feeble hands; it is that seen in their faces. It is astonishing to see how much expression these immature countenances already have. From moment to moment, their features change with inconceivable quickness. On them you see the smile, the wish, the fear, spring into life, and pass away, like so many lightning flashes. Each time you seem to see a different countenance. They certainly have much more flexible facial muscles than ours. On the other hand, their dull eyes tell us almost nothing at all.
Such is naturally the character of their expression when all their wants are physical. Sensations are made known by grimaces, sentiments by looks.
As the first state of man is wretchedness and weakness, so his first utterances are complaints and tears. The child feels his need and cannot satisfy it; he implores aid from others by crying. If he is hungry or thirsty, he cries; if he is too cold or too warm, he cries; if he wishes to move or to be kept at rest, he cries; if he wishes to sleep or to be moved about, he cries. The less control he has of his own mode of living, the oftener he asks those about him to change it. He has but one language, because he feels, so to speak, but one sort of discomfort. In the imperfect condition of his organs, he does not distinguish their different impressions; all ills produce in him only a sensation of pain.
From this crying, regarded as so little worthy of attention, arises the first relation of man to all that surrounds him; just here is forged the first link of that long chain which constitutes social order.
When the child cries, he is ill at ease; he has some want that he cannot satisfy. We examine into it, we search for the want, find it, and relieve it. When we cannot find it, or relieve it, the crying continues. We are annoyed by it; we caress the child to make him keep quiet, we rock him and sing to him, to lull him asleep. If he persists, we grow impatient; we threaten him; brutal nurses sometimes strike him. These are strange lessons for him upon his entrance into life.
The first crying of children is a prayer. If we do not heed it well, this crying soon becomes a command. They begin by asking our aid; they end by compelling us to serve them. Thus from their very weakness, whence comes, at first, their feeling of dependence, springs afterward the idea of empire, and of commanding others. But as this idea is awakened less by their own wants, than by the fact that we are serving them, those moral results whose immediate cause is not in nature, are here perceived. We therefore see why, even at this early age, it is important to discern the hidden purpose which dictates the gesture or the cry.
When the child stretches forth his hand with an effort, but without a sound, he thinks he can reach some object, because he does not properly estimate its distance; he is mistaken. But if, while stretching out his hand, he complains and cries, he is no longer deceived as to the distance. He is commanding the object to come to him, or is directing you to bring it to him. In the first case, carry him to the object slowly, and with short steps; in the second case, do not even appear to understand him. It is worth while to habituate him early not to command people, for he is not their master; nor things, for they cannot understand him. So, when a child wants something he sees, and we mean to give it to him, it is better to carry him to the object than to fetch the object to him. From this practice of ours he will learn a lesson suited to his age, and there is no better way of suggesting this lesson to him.
Reason alone teaches us to know good and evil. Conscience, which makes us love the one and hate the other, is independent of reason, but cannot grow strong without its aid. Before reaching years of reason, we do good and evil unconsciously. There is no moral character in our actions, although there sometimes is in our feeling toward those actions of others which relate to us. A child likes to disturb everything he sees; he breaks, he shatters everything within his reach; he lays hold of a bird just as he would lay hold of a stone, and strangles it without knowing what he is doing.
Why is this? At first view, philosophy would account for it on the ground of vices natural to us—pride, the spirit of domination, self-love, the wickedness of mankind. It would perhaps add, that the sense of his own weakness makes the child eager to do things requiring strength, and so prove to himself his own power. But see that old man, infirm and broken down, whom the cycle of human life brings back to the weakness of childhood. Not only does he remain immovable and quiet, but he wishes everything about him to be in the same condition. The slightest change disturbs and disquiets him; he would like to see stillness reigning everywhere. How could the same powerlessness, joined to the same passions, produce such different effects in the two ages, if the primary cause were not changed? And where can we seek for this difference of cause, unless it be in the physical condition of the two individuals? The active principle common to the two is developing in the one, and dying out in the other; the one is growing, and the other is wearing itself out; the one is tending toward life, and the other toward death. Failing activity concentrates itself in the heart of the old man; in the child it is superabounding, and reaches outward; he seems to feel within him life enough to animate all that surrounds him. Whether he makes or unmakes matters little to him. It is enough that he changes the condition of things, and that every change is an action. If he seems more inclined to destroy things, it is not out of perverseness, but because the action which creates is always slow; and that which destroys, being more rapid, better suits his natural sprightliness.
While the Author of nature gives children this active principle, he takes care that it shall do little harm; for he leaves them little power to indulge it. But no sooner do they look upon those about them as instruments which it is their business to set in motion, than they make use of them in following their own inclinations and in making up for their own want of strength. In this way they become disagreeable, tyrannical, imperious, perverse, unruly; a development not arising from a natural spirit of domination, but creating such a spirit. For no very long experience is requisite in teaching how pleasant it is to act through others, and to need only move one's tongue to set the world in motion.
As we grow up, we gain strength, we become less uneasy and restless, we shut ourselves more within ourselves. The soul and the body put themselves in equilibrium, as it were, and nature requires no more motion than is necessary for out preservation.
But the wish to command outlives the necessity from which, it sprang; power to control others awakens and gratifies self-love, and habit makes it strong. Thus need gives place to whim; thus do prejudices and opinions first root themselves within us.
The principle once understood, we see clearly the point at which we leave the path of nature. Let us discover what we ought to do, to keep within it.
Far from having too much strength, children have not even enough for all that nature demands of them. We ought, then, to leave them the free use of all natural strength which they cannot misuse. First maxim.
We must aid them, supplying whatever they lack in intelligence, in strength, in all that belongs to physical necessity. Second maxim.
In helping them, we must confine ourselves to what is really of use to them, yielding nothing to their whims or unreasonable wishes. For their own caprice will not trouble them unless we ourselves create it; it is not a natural thing. Third maxim.
We must study carefully their language and their signs, so that, at an age when they cannot dissemble, we may judge which of their desires spring from nature itself, and which of them from opinion. Fourth maxim.
The meaning of these rules is, to allow children more personal freedom and less authority; to let them do more for themselves, and exact less from others. Thus accustomed betimes to desire only what they can obtain or do for themselves, they will feel less keenly the want of whatever is not within their own power.
Here there is another and very important reason for leaving children absolutely free as to body and limbs, with the sole precaution of keeping them from the danger of falling, and of putting out of their reach everything that can injure them.
Doubtless a child whose body and arms are free will cry less than one bound fast in swaddling clothes. He who feels only physical wants cries only when he suffers, and this is a great advantage. For then we know exactly when he requires help, and we ought not to delay one moment in giving him help, if possible.
But if you cannot relieve him, keep quiet; do not try to soothe him by petting him. Your caresses will not cure his colic; but he will remember what he has to do in order to be petted. And if he once discovers that he can, at will, busy you about him, he will have become your master; the mischief is done.
If children were not so much thwarted in their movements, they would not cry so much; if we were less annoyed by their crying, we would take less pains to hush them; if they were not so often threatened or caressed, they would be less timid or less stubborn, and more truly themselves as nature made them. It is not so often by letting children cry, as by hastening to quiet them, that we make them rupture themselves. The proof of this is that the children most neglected are less subject than others to this infirmity. I am far from wishing them to be neglected, however. On the contrary, we ought to anticipate their wants, and not wait to be notified of these by the children's crying. Yet I would not have them misunderstand the cares we bestow on them. Why should they consider crying a fault, when they find that it avails so much? Knowing the value of their silence, they will be careful not to be lavish of it. They will, at last, make it so costly that we can no longer pay for it; and then it is that by crying without success they strain, weaken, and kill themselves.
The long crying fits of a child who is not compressed or ill, or allowed to want for anything, are from habit and obstinacy. They are by no means the work of nature, but of the nurse, who, because she cannot endure the annoyance, multiplies it, without reflecting that by stilling the child to-day, he is induced to cry the more to-morrow.
The only way to cure or prevent this habit is to pay no attention to it. No one, not even a child, likes to take unnecessary trouble.
They are stubborn in their attempts; but if you have more firmness than they have obstinacy, they are discouraged, and do not repeat the attempt. Thus we spare them some tears, and accustom them to cry only when pain forces them to it.
Nevertheless when they do cry from caprice or stubbornness, a sure way to prevent their continuing is, to turn their attention to some agreeable and striking object, and so make them forget their desire to cry. In this art most nurses excel, and when skilfully employed, it is very effective. But it is highly important that the child should not know of our intention to divert him, and that he should amuse himself without at all thinking we have him in mind. In this all nurses are unskilful.
All children are weaned too early. The proper time is indicated by their teething. This process is usually painful and distressing. By a mechanical instinct the child, at that time, carries to his mouth and chews everything he holds. We think we make the operation easier by giving him for a plaything some hard substance, such as ivory or coral. I think we are mistaken. Far from softening the gums, these hard bodies, when applied, render them hard and callous, and prepare the way for a more painful and distressing laceration. Let us always take instinct for guide. We never see puppies try their growing teeth upon flints, or iron, or bones, but upon wood, or leather, or rags,—upon soft materials, which give way, and on which the tooth impresses itself.
We no longer aim at simplicity, even where children are concerned. Golden and silver bells, corals, crystals, toys of every price, of every sort. What useless and mischievous affectations they are! Let there be none of them,—no bells, no toys.
A little twig covered with its own leaves and fruit,—a poppy-head, in which the seeds can be heard rattling,—a stick of liquorice he can suck and chew, these will amuse a child quite as well as the splendid baubles, and will not disadvantage him by accustoming him to luxury from his very birth.
From the time they are born, children hear people speak. They are spoken to not only before they understand what is said to them, but before they can repeat the sounds they hear. Their organs, still benumbed, adapt themselves only by degrees to imitating the sounds dictated to them, and it is not even certain that these sounds are borne to their ears at first as distinctly as to ours.
I do not disapprove of a nurse's amusing the child with songs, and with blithe and varied tones. But I do disapprove of her perpetually deafening him with a multitude of useless words, of which he understands only the tone she gives them.
I would like the first articulate sounds he must hear to be few in number, easy, distinct, often repeated. The words they form should represent only material objects which can be shown him. Our unfortunate readiness to content ourselves with words that have no meaning to us whatever, begins earlier than we suppose. Even as in his swaddling-clothes the child hears his nurse's babble, he hears in class the verbiage of his teacher. It strikes me that if he were to be so brought up that he could not understand it at all, he would be very well instructed.[6]
Reflections crowd upon us when we set about discussing the formation of children's language, and their baby talk itself. In spite of us, they always learn to speak by the same process, and all our philosophical speculations about it are entirely useless.
They seem, at first, to have a grammar adapted to their own age, although its rules of syntax are more general than ours. And if we were to pay close attention to them, we should be astonished at the exactness with which they follow certain analogies, very faulty if you will, but very regular, that are displeasing only because harsh, or because usage does not recognize them.
It is unbearable pedantry, and a most useless labor, to attempt correcting in children every little fault against usage; they never fail themselves to correct these faults in time. Always speak correctly in their presence; order it so that they are never so happy with any one as with you; and rest assured their language will insensibly be purified by your own, without your having ever reproved them.
But another error, which has an entirely different bearing on the matter, and is no less easy to prevent, is our being over-anxious to make them speak, as if we feared they might not of their own accord learn to do so. Our injudicious haste has an effect exactly contrary to what we wish. On account of it they learn more slowly and speak more indistinctly. The marked attention paid to everything they utter makes it unnecessary for them to articulate distinctly. As they hardly condescend to open their lips, many retain throughout life an imperfect pronunciation and a confused manner of speaking, which makes them nearly unintelligible.
Children who are too much urged to speak have not time sufficient for learning either to pronounce carefully or to understand thoroughly what they are made to say. If, instead, they are left to themselves, they at first practise using the syllables they can most readily utter; and gradually attaching to these some meaning that can be gathered from their gestures, they give you their own words before acquiring yours. Thus they receive yours only after they understand them. Not being urged to use them, they notice carefully what meaning you give them; and, when they are sure of this, they adopt it as their own.
The greatest evil arising from our haste to make children speak before they are old enough is not that our first talks with them, and the first words they use, have no meaning to them, but that they have a meaning different from ours, without our being able to perceive it. Thus, while they seem to be answering us very correctly, they are really addressing us without understanding us, and without our understanding them. To such ambiguous discourse is due the surprise we sometimes feel at their sayings, to which we attach ideas the children themselves have not dreamed of. This inattention of ours to the true meaning words have for children seems to me the cause of their first mistakes, and these errors, even after children are cured of them, influence their turn of mind for the remainder of their life.
The first developments of childhood occur almost all at once. The child learns to speak, to eat, to walk, nearly at the same time. This is, properly, the first epoch of his life. Before then he is nothing more than he was before he was born; he has not a sentiment, not an idea; he scarcely has sensations; he does not feel even his own existence.
[1] It is useless to enlarge upon the absurdity of this theory, and upon the flagrant contradiction into which Rousseau allows himself to fall. If he is right, man ought to be left without education, and the earth without cultivation. This would not be even the savage state. But want of space forbids us to pause at each like statement of our author, who at once busies himself in nullifying it.
[2] The voice of Rousseau was heard. The nursing of children by their own mothers, which had gone into disuse as vulgar and troublesome, became a fashion. Great ladies prided themselves upon returning to the usage of nature, and infants were brought in with the dessert to give an exhibition of maternal tenderness. This affectation died out, but in most families the good and wholesome custom of motherhood was retained. This page of Rousseau's contributed its share to the happy result.
[3] This remark is not a just one. How often have we seen unhappy creatures disgusted with life because of some dreadful and incurable malady? It is true that suicide, being an act of madness, is more frequently caused by those troubles which imagination delights itself in magnifying up to the point of insanity.
[4] This is an allusion to one of the most unfortunate episodes in the life of Rousseau,—his abandoning of the children whom Thérèse Levasseur bore him, and whom he sent to a foundling hospital because he felt within him neither courage to labor for their support, nor capacity to educate them. Sad practical defect in this teacher of theories of education!
[5] For the particular example of education which he supposes, Rousseau creates a tutor whom he consecrates absolutely, exclusively, to the work. He desires one so perfect that he calls him a prodigy. Let us not blame him for this. The ideal of those who assume the noble and difficult office of a teacher of childhood cannot be placed too high. As to the pupil, Rousseau imagines a child of average ability, in easy circumstances, and of robust health. He makes him an only son and an orphan, so that no family vicissitudes may disturb the logic of his plan.
All this may be summed up by saying that he considers the child in himself with regard to his individual development, and without regard to his relations to ordinary life. This at the same time renders his task easy, and deprives him of an important element of education.
[6] No doubt this sarcasm is applicable to those teachers who talk so as to say nothing. A teacher ought, on the contrary, to speak only so as to be understood by the child. He ought to adapt himself to the child's capacity; to employ no useless or conventional expressions; his language ought to arouse curiosity and to impart light.