Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 30.djvu/71

Rh special position. No mother, no child. Follow Nature. All the mischief of children comes from weakness; make the child strong, and it will be good. Educators render children miserable in that they take the presence of childhood for nothing, and keep in their eye only the future of the child which it may never reach. See in the child only the child. Before the child reaches understanding, it must be thrown entirely upon the physical world. Therefore, you should not begin to reason too early with children. The first education should be purely negative: it consists not in teaching distinctions between virtue and vice, but in keeping the heart from faults, the understanding from errors. The only moral instruction for children is to do nobody any evil. Instruction should begin with things. At twelve years of age sense-impressions should be built up to conceptions. No other book should be used than the world, no other instruction than facts. The secret of education is so to arrange it that bodily and spiritual exercises are reciprocally helpful. At the fifteenth year of his life Émile appears in this wise cultivated. Obliged to learn by himself, he uses his own, not another man's understanding, and he puts forth nothing on authority. Émile has, to be sure, little but no half knowledge. He knows there is much he does not know. He has only knowledge of Nature—nothing historical; about metaphysics and morality he knows nothing. What death is, he knows not; but accustomed, without resistance, to surrender himself to the law of necessity, he will die, when he must, without a sigh. His body is sound, his limbs are sure, his understanding right and without prejudice, his heart free and without passions. Thus is Émile at fifteen years of age.

"But man is not created to remain a child. He steps out of this condition at Nature's appointed time. His physiognomy changes and gains expression. The voice changes. The eyes, those mirrors of the soul, that hitherto have said nothing, receive language and meaning; an increasing fire animates them, their glances are living. He feels without knowing what he feels. He is restless without cause. Be upon thy guard. Not one moment from the rudder, or all is lost! Now is the man really born to life, and nothing human is foreign to him. Hitherto our anxiety has been but a child's play; now it begins to be a great weight. This time, when generally education is ended, is the very time when ours shall truly commence. Now Emile is to become acquainted with his own kind. This is the period for history. To know men, you must see them act. In intercourse with the world you only hear men speak—they show their words, but conceal their deeds. In history they are unveiled, and we are able to judge. But Émile shall judge them himself—only thus can he gather knowledge of mankind. If the author's opinion continually lead him, he sees through another's glass, and when this fails he sees nothing at all. He shall see with his ovm eyes, feel with his own heart; no authority shall control him save the authority of his reason. But now