BOOK FOUR

[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 botton 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 inseperable 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 perscribed 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. --

[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

" 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 poeple 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

[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?

[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 tranquillity 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 t