[626:]

ÉMILE, clapping his hands and letting out a cry of joy:

Oh, I see Montmorency! There it is, right in front of us, in plain view! Let's go have lunch, let's eat, let's run fast! Astronomy is good for something.

[627:] Be sure that if he does not say this last phrase, he will think it -- it does not matter which so long as I do not say it myself. He will certainly never forget this day's lesson as long as he lives, whereas if I had made him imagine all this in his room, my speech would have been forgotten the next day. One must speak as much as one can by actions and say only those things that one cannot do.

[628:] The reader will not expect me to have such a poor opinion of him or her as to supply an example of every kind of study; but, whatever is taught, I cannot too strongly urge the tutor to adapt his practices to the capacity of his scholar. For once more I repeat the risk is not in what he does not know, but in what he thinks he knows.

[629:] I remember how I once tried to give a child a taste for chemistry. After showing him several metallic precipitates, I explained how ink was made. I told him how its blackness was merely the result of fine particles of iron separated from the vitriol and precipitated by an alkaline solution. In the midst of my learned explanation the little traitor stopped me abruptly with the question I myself had taught him. I was very embarrassed.

[630:] After thought for a while I decided what to do. I sent for some wine from the cellar of the master of the house, and some very cheap wine from a wine-merchant. I took a small flask of an alkaline solution, and placing two glasses before me filled with the two sorts of wine [Note 2] , I spoke to thim thus.

[631:] People falsify many products in order to make them appear better than they are. These falsifications fool the eye and the taste, but they are harmful and make the falsified thing worse with its fine appearance than it was before.

[632:] All sorts of drinks are falsified, especially wine; for the deception is more difficult to detect and makes more profit for the deceiver.

[633:] Sour wine is falsified with litharge; litharge is a preparation of lead. Lead in combination with acids forms a sweet salt which corrects the harsh taste of the sour wine, but it is poisonous to those who drink it. So before we drink wine of doubtful quality we should be able to tell if there is lead in it. This is how one can do that.

[634:] Wine contains not merely an inflammable spirit as you have seen from the brandy made from it; it also contains an acid, as you know from the vinegar made from it.

[635:] This acid has an affinity for metals. It combines with them and forms salts, such as iron-rust, which is only iron dissolved by the acid in air or water, or such as verdegris, which is only copper dissolved in vinegar.

[636:] But this same acid has a still greater affinity for alkalis than for metals, so that when we add alkalis to the above-mentioned salts, the acid sets free the metal with which it had combined and combines with the alkali.

[637:] Then the metal, set free by the acid which held it in solution, is precipitated and the liquid becomes opaque.

[638:] If then there is litharge in either of these glasses of wine. the acid holds the litharge in solution. When I pour into it an alkaline solution, the acid will be forced to set the lead free in order to combine with the alkali. The lead, no longer held in solution, will reappear, the liquor will become thick, and after a time the lead will be deposited at the bottom of the glass.

[639:] If there is no lead [Note 3] nor other metal in the wine the alkali will slowly [Note 4] combine with the acid, all will remain clear and there win be no precipitate.

[640:] Then I poured my alkaline solution first into one glass and then into the other. The wine from our own house remained clear and unclouded, the other at once became turbid, and an hour later the lead might be plainly seen, precipitated at the bottom of the glass.

[641:] "This," said I, "is a pure natural wine and fit to drink; the other is falsified and poisonous. This is discovered through the same kind of science as the one whose usefulness you asked me about. Someone who knows how to make ink can also know what wines are adulterated."

[642:] I was very well pleased with my illustration, but I found it made little impression on my pupil. When I had time to think about it I saw I had been a fool, for not only was it impossible for a child of twelve to follow my explanations, but the usefulness of the experiment did not appeal to him. He had tasted both glasses of wine and found them both good, so he attached no meaning to the word "falsified" which I thought I had explained so nicely. The other words, "unhealthy" and "poison," similarly had no meaning for him; he was in the same condition as the boy who told the story of Philip and his doctor. It is the case with all children.

[643:] The relation of effects to causes whose connection is unknown to us, the good things and bad things about which we have no idea, the needs we have never felt, are nothing for us. It is impossible to interest us in them sufficiently to make us do anything connected with them. At fifteen we can conceive of the happiness of a wise man no better than we can at thirty conceive of the glory of paradise. If we can not conceive of either we will do little to attain them, and even if we could conceive of them, we would still do little unless we desired them and unless we felt they were right for us. It is easy to convince a child that what you wish to teach him is useful, but it is useless to convince him if you cannot also persuade him. In vain may pure reason make us approve or blame; it is only passion that makes us act, and how can one become passionate about interests that one doesn't yet have?

[644:] Never show a child what he cannot see. Since mankind is almost unknown to him, and since you cannot make a man of him, bring the man down to the level of the child. While you are thinking of what will be useful to him at another age, speak to him only of things whose usefulness he can see in the present. Moreover, as soon as he begins to reason let there be no comparison with other children, no rivalry, no competition, not even in running races. I would far rather he did not learn anything than that he learn it through jealousy or self-conceit. However, each year I will mark the progress he has made; I will compare the results with those of the following year. I will say to him: You have grown so many inches; there is the ditch you jumped, the weight you carried, the distance you flung a pebble, the race you ran without stopping to take breath, etc.. Let us see what you can do now. Thus I stimulate him without making him jealous of anyone. He wants to surpass himself; he ought to. I see no reason why he should not emulate himself.

[645:] I hate books. They only teach us to talk about things that we do not know. It is said that Hermes engraved the elements of science on pillars lest a deluge should destroy them. Had he imprinted them in men' s heads they would have been preserved by tradition. Well-prepared minds are the monuments on which human knowledge is most deeply engraved. Is there no way of correlating so many lessons scattered through so many books, no way of focussing them on some common object, easy to see, interesting to follow, and stimulating even at this age? If one could invent a situation in which all the natural needs of man were were shown in a way that was perceptible to the mind of a child, and where the means of providing for these needs developed successively and with the same facility, it would be the stirring and simple portrayal of this state that should form the earliest training of the child's imagination.

[646:] Eager philosopher, I see your own imagination light up. Spare yourself the trouble; this state is already known, it is described, with due respect to you, far better than you could describe it, at least with greater truth and simplicity. Since we must have books, there is one book which, to my thinking, supplies the best treatise of natural education. This is the first book Emile will read; for a long time it will form his whole library, and it will always retain an honoured place. It will be the text to which all our talks about natural science are but the commentary. As we progress it will serve as a test of the state of our judgment, and as long as our taste is not spoiled, to read it will always be a pleasure for us. What is this wonderful book? Is it Aristotle? Pliny? Buffon? No; it is Robinson Crusoe.

[647:] Robinson Crusoe on his island, alone, deprived of the help of his fellow-men and of the tools of every art, yet providing for his own subsistance, his own preservation, and even procuring for himself a kind of well-being -- here is an object interesting for every age and that one can find a thousand ways to make pleasing to children. Here is how we can make a reality of that desert island which formerly served as an illustration. This state, I admit, is not that of social man; probably it is not that of Emile; but it is on the basis of this same state that he should judge all the others. The surest way to raise oneself above prejudice and to base his judgments on the true relations of things is to put oneself in the place of a solitary man and to judge all things as they would be judged by such a man in relation to their own utility.

[648:] Stripped of all of its irrelevancies, this novel -- beginning with Robinson's shipwreck on his island and ending with the coming of the ship which takes him away -- will form both Emile's amusement and his instruction during the whole period we are considering. I want his head be full of it, and for him to be ceaselessly busy with his castle, his goats, his plantations. Let him figure out in detail, not from books but from things, all that is necessary in such a case. Let him think he is Robinson himself; let him see himself dressed in skins, wearing a tall cap, a great sword, all the grotesque get-up of Robinson Crusoe, even to the umbrella which he will scarcely need. I want him to anxiously consider what measures to take if this or that happens to be missing, to examine his hero's conduct, to search for things he might have omitted or that he might have done better. He should carefully note his mistakes so as not to fall into them in similar circumstances, for you may be sure he will plan out a similar establishment for himself. This is the genuine castle in the air of this happy age, when the child knows no other happiness but necessity and liberty.

[649:] What a resource will this infatuation supply in the hands of a skilful teacher who has aroused it for the purpose of using it. The child who wants to build a storehouse on his desert island will be more eager to learn than the master to teach. He will want to know everything that is useful and will want to know only that. You will not need to guide him; you will only need to hold him back. Nevertheless, hurry to establish him on his island while his happiness is limited to it. For the day is approaching when, if he still wants to live there, he will not want to live alone, and when even the companionship of Friday, who now hardly makes an impression on him, will not long suffice.

[650:] The practice of the natural arts which can suffice a man alone leads to research in the industrial arts which call for the cooperation of many hands. The former may be carried on by solitary people, by savages; but the latter can only arise in society and make it necessary. As long as only physical needs are recognised, each man is sufficient to himself; the introduction of superfluity makes indispensible the division and distribution of labor. For even though one man working alone only earns the subsistence of one man, a hundred men working together can earn enough subsistence for two hundred. As soon therefore as some men are idle, it is necessary that the coordination of those who do work supply the work of those who do nothing.

[651:] Your greatest care should be to keep out of your scholar's mind all notions of social relations that are not within his reach. But when the chain of knowledge forces you to show him the mutual dependence of mankind, instead of showing him its moral side, turn all his attention at first towards industry and the mechanical arts which make them useful to each other. While you take him from one workshop to another, do not let him see any work without trying it himself, and do not let him leave it without knowing perfectly the reason for everything that is done there or at least for everything that he has observed. With this aim you should do some work yourself and show him everything by example. To make him a master, be yourself an apprentice, and expect that one hour of work will teach him more things than he would retain in a whole day of explanations.

[652:] There is a public estime attached to the various arts which is in inverse ratio to their real utility. This estime is even measured directly according to their disutility, and that ought to be. The most useful arts are those which earn the least, for the number of workmen is proportional to men's need, and the work which everybody needs must remain at a price that the poor can pay. On the other hand, those influential people -- not those called artisans but artists -- who work only for the rich and idle, put an arbitrary price on their baubles; and since the worth of this vain labour is only based on opinion, the price itself becomes part of that worth and they are estimed in proportion to their cost. The rich think so much of these things not because they are useful but because they are beyond the reach of the poor. Nolo habere bona, nisi quibus populus inviderit.[Note 5]

[653:] What will become of your pupils if you let them acquire this insane prejudice, if you share it yourself, if, for instance, they see you enter into a jeweler's shop with more respect than you show in a locksmith's? What judgement will they form of the true worth of the arts and the true value of things when they see everywhere the price of fantasy in contradiction with the price based on real utility, and that the more a thing costs the less it is worth? The first moment you let these ideas enter their heads you may abandon the rest of their education. In spite of you they will be raised like everyone else -- you will have wasted fourteen years of effort.

[654:] Focused on furnishing his island, Emile will have other ways of seeing. Robinson would have given more importance to a toolmaker's shop than all of Saide's finery put together. He would have reckoned the toolmaker a very worthy man, and Saide little more than a charlatan.

[655:] "My son is made to live in the world: he will not live with wise men but with fools. He must therefore know their follies, since it is by them that they want to be led. A real knowledge of things may be good, but the knowledge of men and their opinions is better, for in human society man's greatest tool is man himself, and the wisest man is he who uses this tool best. What is the good of giving children the idea of an imaginary order completely contrary to the one that they will find established and on the basis of which they will have to govern themselves? Give them first lessons on how to be wise, and then you will give them a way to judge how others are fools."

[656:] These are the specious maxims by which fathers in their false wisdom strive to make their children the slaves of the prejudices they feed them and themselves the puppets of a senseless crowd they hope to make subservient to their passions. In order to achieve a knowledge of man, we must know so many things before we know him! Man is the final subject studied by a sage, and you expect to make him the first subject studied by a child! Before teaching the child our sentiments, begin by teaching him to appreciate them. Do you perceive folly when you mistake it for wisdom? To be wise we must discern what is not wise. How can your child know men when he can neither judge of their judgments nor unravel their errors? It is wrong to know what they think when one ingnores whether what they think is true or false. First, therefore, teach him what things are in themselves. Afterwards you can teach him what they are in our eyes. It is thus that he will learn to compare opinion and truth and rise above the vulgar crowd. For no one recognizes prejudices when one has adopted them, and no one can lead a people when he ressembles it. But if you begin by teaching public opinion before he learns how to judge of its worth, you can be sure that whatever you may do it will become his own and that you will never destroy it. I conclude that to make a young man judicioius one must form his judgement instead of dictating yours to him.

[657:] You see that until now I have not spoken to my pupil about men. He would have too much sense to listen to me. His relations to his species are as yet not sufficiently apparent to him to enable him to judge others by himself. He knows no human being but himself, and he is far from really knowing even himself. But if he forms few judgements about himself, at least those he has are accurate. He knows nothing of another's place, but he knows his own and keeps to it. Instead of social laws that he cannot know we have used the chains of necessity to hold him. He is still hardly more than a physical being; let us continue to treat him that way.

[658:] It is by their perceptible relation to his utility, his safety, his conservation, his well-being that he must judge all the bodies of nature and all the works of men. Thus iron ought to have in his eyes a much greater price than gold, and glass than a diamond. In the same way, he will honor a shoemaker or a mason more than he does a Lempereur, a Le Blanc, or all the jewelers in Europe. In his eyes a confectioner is a really great man, and he would give the whole academy of sciences for the smallest pastrycook in the rue des Lombards. Goldsmiths, engravers, gilders, and embroiderers are in his view lazy people who play at utterly useless games. He does not even think much of a clockmaker. The happy child enjoys time without being its slave; he takes advantage of it but does not know its price. The calm of the passions which makes the passage of time equal to him makes any means of measuring time unnecessary. When I assumed that Emile had a watch, [Note 6] just as I assumed that he cried, it was a common Emile that I chose in order to serve my purpose and make myself understood. As for the real Emile, a child so different from others would not serve as an example for anything.

[659:] There is a no less natural and even more judicious order by which the arts are valued according to relations of necessity which tie them together. This order would place in the highest rank the most independent arts and in the lowest those which depend the most on others. This order, which furnishes important considerations on the order of society in general, is similar to the preceding one and is subject to the same inversions in the estime of men. Accordingly, the use of raw materials is the work of the least honorable trades, those practically without profit, whereas the more these same materials change hands, the more the manufactured good rises in price and in honor. I do not ask whether it is true that one's skill is really greater and merits more reward in the meticulous arts which give the final form to these materials than in the earliest labor which converted them to man's use. But I do say that in each case the art which is most generally useful and indispensible is incontestably that which merits most esteem; and that the art which requires the least help from others is more worthy of honour than those which are dependent on other arts, since it is freer and more nearly independent. These are the true laws of appreciation of the arts and of industry; all the rest is arbitrary and depends only on opinion.

[660:] The first and most respectable of all the arts is agriculture. I would put metal work in the second rank, carpentry in the third, and so on. The child who has not been seduced by vulgar prejudices will judge them precisely in this way. How many important reflections will our Emile draw from his Robinson on this subject! What will he think when he sees the arts only brought to perfection by sub-division, by the infinite multiplication of tools. He will say, "All those people are stupidly ingenious. You would think they were afraid that their arms and their fingers had no use, they invent so many tools instead. To practice only one art they become the slaves of a thousand others; every single workman needs a whole town. As for my companion and me, we put our genius in our own skill; we only make tools we can take about with us. All these people who are so proud of their talents in Paris could not do anything at all on our island; they would have become our apprentices."

[661:] Reader, do not stop to watch the bodily exercises and manual skill of our pupil, but consider the direction we are giving to his childish curiosity; consider his common-sense, his inventive spirit, his foresight; consider what a head he will have on his shoulders. In all that he sees and all that he does he will want to know everything, he will want to know the reason for everything. From tool to tool he will go back to the first beginning, he will admit nothing on supposition. He will refuse to learn anything requiring a previous knowledge that he himself has not acquired. If he sees a spring made he will want to know how they got the steel from the mine; if he sees the pieces of a chest put together, he will want to know how the tree was cut down. If he works himself with each tool that he uses he will not fail to say, "If I didn't have this tool, how could I make one like it, or how could I get along without it?"

[662:] It is, however, difficult to avoid another error. When the teacher is very fond of certain occupations, he is apt to assume that the child shares his tastes. Beware whenever you begin to get carried away by the fun of working that the child isn't becoming bored but does not dare to admit it. The child should be into what he is doing, but you should be completely into him -- observing him, watching him constantly, and without his knowing it anticipating all his feelings beforehand and preventing those that he should not have.. In short, keep him occupied in such a way that he not only feels useful but takes a pleasure in understanding the purpose which his work will serve.

[663:] The social dimension of the arts consists in the exchanges of industry, that of commerce in the exchange of things, that of banks in the exchange of symbols and of money. All these ideas hang together, and their elementary notions have already been grasped: we laid the foundations for all of that in early childhood with the help of Robert the gardener. It remains for us now to generalize these same ideas and to extend them to more examples in order to make the child understand the workings of trade -- both taken on its own terms and made concrete to him by means of particular instances of natural history with regard to the special products of each country, by particular instances of the arts and sciences which concern navigation and the difficulties of transport, greater or less in proportion to the distance between places, the position of land, seas, rivers, etc.

[664:] No society can exist without exchange, no exchange can exist without a common standard of measurement, and no common standard of measurement can exist without equality. Hence the first law of every society is some conventional equality either in men or in things.

[665:] Conventional equality between men, a very different thing from natural equality, makes necessary positive law, that is, government and laws. The political knowledge of a child should be clear and limited; he should know nothing of government in general beyond what concerns the rights of property, of which he has already some idea.

[666:] Conventional equality between things has led to the invention of money, for money is only a term of comparison for the value of different sorts of things; and in this sense money is the real bond of society. But anything may be money: in former days it was cattle. shells are still used among many peoples, iron was money in Sparta, leather in Sweden, while gold and silver are used among us.

[667:] Metals, being easier to carry, have generally been chosen as the means of every exchange, and these metals have been made into coin to save the trouble of continual weighing and measuring. For the stamp on the coin is merely evidence that the coin thus marked is of a certain weight; and only the ruler has the right to coin money given that he alone has the right to require that his testiony have authority for the whole nation.

[668:] Explained thus, the use of this invention can be understood by even the stupidest person. It is difficult to make a direct comparison between various things -- for instance, between cloth and corn. But when we find a common measure in money, it is easy for the manufacturer and the farmer to relate the value of the goods they wish to exchange to this common measure. If a given quantity of cloth is worth a given sum of money, and if a given quantity of corn is worth the same sum of money, then it follows that the seller, receiving the corn in exchange for his cloth, makes an equitable exchange. Thus by means of money it becomes possible to compare the values of goods of various kinds.

[669:] Do not go further than that and and do not enter into an explication of the moral effects of this institution. In everything it is important state clearly the use before showing the the abuse. If you attempt to teach children how the sign has led to the neglect of the actual thing, how money has given rise to all the illusions of public opinion, how countries rich in silver must be poor in everything else, you will be treating these children not only as philosophers but as wise men, and you will be attempting to make them understand something even few philosophers have been able to conceptualize.

[670:] What a wealth of interesting objects the curiosity of our pupil may be turned towards without ever leaving the real and material relations that are within his reach, and without arousing in his mind a single idea that he cannot conceive! The teacher's art consists in never burdening his pupil's observations with minutia that hold no significance but in ceaselessy leading him towards relations of importance which he will one day need to know in order to rightly judge between good and evil in civil society. The teacher must be able to adapt the conversation with which he amuses his pupil to the turn already given to his mind. A problem which another child would hardly touch upon will torment Emile half a year.

[671:] We go to dine in an opulent home. There we find preparations for a feast -- many people, many servants, many dishes, and elegant fine china. All this apparatus of pleasure and feasting has something intoxicating about it that goes to the head when one is not accustomed to it. I foresee the effect of all this on my young pupil. While the meal goes on, while different courses come one after another, while a thousand noisy conversations are heard around the table, I lean towards him and whisper in his ear: "Through how many hands would you estimate that all of the things you see on this table have passed before coming here?" What a crowd of ideas I awaken in his brain by these few words! Immediately all the vapors of his delirium vanish. He thinks, he reflects, he calculates, he worries. While the philosophers, excited by wine or perhaps by the women next to them, are babbling like children, here he is philosophizing all alone in his corner. He asks questions; I decline to answer and put him off to another time. He becomes impatient, he forgets to eat and drink, he burns to get away from table and converse with me at his ease. What an object for his curiosity, what a text for instruction. With a healthy judgment that nothing has corrupted, what will he think of luxury when he finds that all the regions of the world have contributed, that twenty million hands perhaps have worked for a long time, that it has cost the lives, perhaps, of thousands of men, and all that to present him with pomp at noon that which he'll deposit in his chamber pot at night?

[672:] Watch with care what secret conclusions he draws in his heart from all his observations. If you have watched him less carefully than I suppose, his thoughts may be tempted in another direction; he may consider himself a person of great importance in the world when he sees so much labor concentrated on the preparation of his dinner. If you suspect this kind of reasoning, you can easily prevent it, or at any rate promptly erase the false impression. As of now he can only appropriate things by personal enjoyment, he can only judge of their fitness or unfitness for him by his sense perceptions of them. The comparison of a rustic meal, prepared by exercise, seasoned by hunger, liberty, and joy, with this magnificent but tedious repast will suffice to make him feel that he has gotten no real advantage from the splendour of the feast, and that his stomach being as well satisfied when he left the table of the peasant as when he left the table of the financier, he has gained nothing more from the one than from the other that he could truly call his own.

[673:] Imagine what a tutor might say to him on such an occasion. Consider the two dinners and decide for yourself which gave you most pleasure, which seemed the most joyful, at which did people eat with the greatest appetite, drink the most gaily, laugh the most heartily. Which was the least tedious and required least change of courses? Yet note the difference---this black bread you so enjoy is made from the peasant's own harvest; his wine is dark in colour and of a common kind, but wholesome and refreshing; it was made in his own vineyard. The cloth is made of his own hemp, spun and woven in the winter by his wife and daughters and the maid; no hands but theirs have touched the food. The closest mill and the neighboring market are the limits of the universe for them. In what way did you really enjoy all that the produce of faraway lands and the service of so many hands at the other table? If you did not get a better meal, what have you gained from this abundance? How much of it was made for you? If you had been the master of the house, the tutor might say, all of that would have been still foreign to you, for the anxiety of displaying your enjoyment before the eyes of others would have robbed you of it. The pains would be yours, the pleasure theirs.

[674:] This speech might be very fine, but it would worth nothing to Emile, for whom it would be beyond reach and whose ideas do not come by dictation. Speak to him more simply. After these two experiences, say to him some morning, "Where shall we have dinner today? Around that mountain of silver that covered three quarters of the table and those rows of paper flowers on mirrors that came with the dessert? Among those ladies with large headdresses who treat you like a little doll and want you to talk about what you do not know? Or in that village two miles from here, with those good people who welcome us so joyously and give us such good fresh cream?" Emile's choice will not be difficult, for he is neither a chatterbox nor a show off; he cannot stand constraint and all our fine dishes do not tempt him. But he is always ready for a run in the country and is very fond of good fruit and vegetables, sweet cream and kindly people.[Note 7] On our way, the thought will occur to him, "All those people who laboured to prepare that grand feast were either wasting their time or they have no idea how to enjoy our pleasures."

[675:] My examples, good perhaps for one child, would be bad for a thousand others. If you understand its spirit you will be able to vary the examples as needed, depending on your study of the genius of each child, and this in turn depends on the occasions which happen to demonstrate it. You should not assume that in the three or four years we have to work with we could give even the most gifted child an idea of all the arts and sciences sufficient to enable him to study them for himself when he is older. But by bringing before him what he needs to know, we put him in a position to develop his own tastes, his own talents, to take the first step towards the object which touches his genius, and to show us the the path we must clear in order to promote nature.

[676:] Another advantage of this chain of limited but exact bits of knowledge is to show by their connection and interdependence how to rank them in one's own estimation and to be on one's guard against those prejudices, common to most men, which draw them towards the talents they themselves cultivate and away from those they have neglected. He who sees clearly the order of the whole sees the place where each piece ought to fit. He who sees one part well and who knows it deeply can be a a learned man, but the former is a wise man; and you remember it is wisdom rather than knowledge that we hope to acquire.

[677:] However that may be, my method does not depend on my examples. It depends on the amount of a man's powers at different ages and the choice of occupations adapted to those powers. I think it would be easy to find a method which appeared to give better results, but if it were less suited to the type, sex, and age of the scholar, I doubt whether the results would really be as good.

[678:] At the beginning of this second period we took advantage of the fact that our strength was more than enough for our needs in order to take us outside ourselves. We have ranged the heavens and measured the earth; we have sought out the laws of nature; we have explored the whole of our island. Now let us return to ourselves; let us unconsciously approach our own dwelling. We are happy indeed if we do not find it already occupied by the dreaded enemy who is preparing to seize it.

[679:] What remains to be done when we have observed all that lies around us? We must turn to our own use all that we can get; we must increase our comfort by means of our curiosity. Up until now we have provided ourselves with tools of all kinds, not knowing which we require. Perhaps those we do not want will be useful to others, and perhaps we may need theirs. Thus we discover the use of exchange; but for this we must know each other's needs, what tools other people use, what they can offer in exchange. Suppose we have ten men, each of whom has ten different requirements. To get what he needs for himself each must work at ten different kinds of work. But given the differences in genius and in talent, one will succeed at one kind of work, another at another. Each of them, suited for diverse jobs, will work at all of them and will be badly served. Let us form these ten men into a society, and let each apply himself to the to the kind of occupation that suits him best, and let him work at it for himself and for the rest. Each will profit from the talents of the others' talents just as if they were his own; each will perfect his own talent by by continual exercise; and thus all ten, perfectly well provided for, will still have a surplus for others. This is the plain foundation of all our institutions. It is not my aim to examine its consequences here; that is what I have done in another book.

[680:] According to this principle, any one who wanted to see himself as an isolated being, dependent on no one and self-sufficient, could only be miserable. He could not even continue to exist, for finding the whole earth covered with mine and thine while he had only himself, how could he get the means of subsistence? When we leave the state of nature we compel others to do the same: no one can remain in a state of nature in spite of his fellow-creatures. And to try to remain in it when it is no longer practicable would really be to leave it, for self-preservation is nature's first law.

[681:] Thus the idea of social relations is gradually developed in the child's mind, even before he can really be an active member of human society. Emile sees that in order to have tools for his own use other people must have theirs, and that he can get in exchange what he needs and they possess. I easily bring him to feel the need of such exchange and to take advantage of it.

[682:] "Sir, I must live," said a miserable writer of satires to the minister who reproved him for his infamous trade. "I do not see the necessity for that," replied the great man coldly. This answer, excellent from the minister, would have been barbarous and untrue in any other mouth. Every man must live. This argument, which appeals to every one with more or less force in proportion to his humanitarian tendencies, strikes me as unanswerable when applied to oneself. Since the strongest aversion that nature has implanted in us is our dislike of death, it follows that everything is permissible to the man who has no other means of living. The principles by which a good man is taught to scorn his life and to sacrifice it to duty are far removed from this primitive simplicity. Happy are those nations where one can be good without effort, and just without virtue! If in this world there is any state so miserable that one cannot live there without doing wrong, where the citizen is evil by necessity, it is not the criminal whom you should hang but he who forced him to become one.

[683:] As soon as Emile knows what life is, my first care will be to teach him to preserve it. Until now I have made no distinction of condition, rank, status, or fortune; nor shall I distinguish between them in what follows, because man is the same in every status. The rich man's stomach is no bigger than the poor man's, nor is his digestion any better. The master's arm is neither longer nor stronger than the slave's; a nobleman is no taller than a man of the people; and finally, since natural needs are the same to all, the means for satisfying them should be everywhere equal. Adapt the eduction of man to man, and not to that which is not him. Do you not see that in working to form him exclusively for one condition you are making him useless for anything else, and that if his fortune happens to change you will have worked only to make him unhappy? What could be more absurd than a great lord in rags who carries with him into his misery all the prejudices of his birth? What is more despicable than a rich man fallen into poverty, who, remembering the scorn with which he himself regarded the poor, feels that he has become the lowest of men? One of them has, as a last resort, the job of becoming a public nuisance, the other a cringing servant, with this fine saying, "I must live."

[684:] You count on the present order of society without considering that this order is itself subject to inevitable revolutions and that that it is impossible to foresee or prevent the one which may affect your children. The great become small, the rich become poor, the king becomes a commoner. Are the blows of fate so rare that you can count on being exempt from them? We are approaching the state of crisis and the century of revolutions.[Note 8] Who can answer to what you may then become? Everything that man has made, man can destroy. Nature's characters alone are ineradicable, and nature makes neither princes, nor rich men, nor noblemen. This satrap whom you have educated for greatness, what will become of him when he is brought down? This financier who can only live on gold, what will he do in poverty? This haughty fool who cannot use his own hands, who prides himself on what is not really his -- what will he do when it is all taken away? Happy is the man who can leave the estate that leavs him and remain a man despite his fate! Let men praise as they will that conquered monarch who wanted in his fury to be buried beneath the fragments of his throne. As for me, I look at him with scorn. To me he only exists with his crown, and when that is gone he is no longer king. But he who loses his crown and lives without it is therefore above it. From the rank of a king, which may be held by a coward, a villain, or a madman, he rises to the rank of a man, a position few can fill. Thus he triumphs over Fortune, he braves it. He owes nothing except to himself alone, and when he has nothing left to show but himself he is not nothing, he is something. Yes, I prefer a hundred times the King of Corinth who was a schoolmaster at Syracuse and the King of Macedonia who was a court recorder at Rome to the wretched Tarquin who does not know what to do if he is not ruling, or the heir and son of a king of kings -- the plaything of anyone who dared insult his poverty -- wandering from court to court in search of help and finding nothing but reproach for lack of knowing any trade but one that is no longer in his power.

[685:] Man and citizen, whatever he may be, has nothing to invest in society but himself. All his other goods belong to society in spite of him, and when a man is rich, either he does not enjoy his wealth, or the public enjoys it too. In the first case he robs others as well as himself; in the second he gives them nothing. Thus his debt to society is still unpaid as long as he only pays with his goods. "But my father was serving society while he was acquiring his wealth." That may be. So he paid his own debt, not yours. You owe more to others than if you had been born with nothing, since you were born privileged. It is not fair that what one man has done for society should discharge another from what he owes it, for since every man owes all that he is, he can only pay his own debt; and no father can transmit to his son any right to be useless to his fellows. Now, according to you this is what he has done by transmitting his riches, which are the proof and the price of his work. The man who eats in idleness what he has not himself earned steals it; and the stockholder whom the state pays differs little from a robber who lives at the expense of the passers-by. Outside of society, the isolated man owes nothing to anyone; he has a right to live as he pleases. But in society, where he necessarily lives at the expense of others, he owes them in work the price of his maintenance; this is without exception. To work is therefore an indispensable duty for social man. Rich or poor, powerful or feeble, any idle citizen is a thief.

[686:] Now of all the occupations which can fournish subsistence to man, the nearest to a state of nature is manual labor; of all conditions the most independent of fortune and of men is that of the artisan. The artisan depends on his work alone. He is as free as the laborer is inslaved, for the latter depends on his field whose harvest is at the discretion of others. An enemy, a prince, a powerful neighbour, or a law-suit may take away this field; through this field he may be harassed in all sorts of ways. But if the artisan is ill-treated his goods are quickly packed: he folds up his arms and leaves. Nevertheless, agriculture is still the first occupation of man; it is the most honest, most useful, and consequently the most noble one he can practice. I do not say to Emile, "Learn agriculture"; he already knows it. All rural work is familiar to him. It was his first occupation, and he returns to it continually. So I say to him, "Cultivate your father's lands, but if you lose this inheritance, or if you have none to lose, what will you do? So learn a trade."

[687:] A trade for my son! My son a working man! Sir, what are you thinking of? Madame, my thoughts are wiser than yours; you want to make him fit for nothing but a lord, a marquis, or a prince; and some day he may be less than nothing. I want to give him a rank that he cannot lose, a rank that will always do him honor; and, whatever you may say, he will have fewer equals with this one title than with all those you want to give him.

[688:] The letter kills, the spirit gives life. To know a trade it is less a question of learning it than of overcoming the prejudices that scorn it. You will never be reduced to earning your livelihood; Ah, too bad, too bad for you! No matter; do not work for necessity but for glory. Lower yourself to the condition of an artisan in order to rise above your own. In order to conquer fortune and things, begin by making yourself independent of them. To rule through public opinion, begin by ruling over it.

[689:] Remember I demand no talent, only a trade, a genuine trade, a purely mechanical art in which the hands work harder than the head, a trade which does not lead to fortune but makes one able to get along without it. In households well beyond the danger of lacking bread I have known fathers carry foresight to such a point as to provide their children not only with ordinary teaching but with knowledge from which they could get a living if anything happened. These farsighted parents thought they were doing a great thing. They did nothing, for the resources they imagine they have secured depend on that very fortune of which they would make their children independent; so that unless they found themselves in circumstances fitted for the display of their talents, they would die of hunger as if they had none.

[690:] As soon as it is a question of influence and intrigue you may just as well use these means to keep yourself affluent as to acquire, in the depths of poverty, the means of returning to your former position. If you cultivate the arts which depend on the artist's reputation, if you fit yourself for jobs which are only obtained by favor, how will that help you when, rightly disgusted with the world, you scorn the steps by which you must climb? You have studied politics and the self-interest of rulers -- that is fine. But how will you use this knowledge if you cannot get through to the ministers, the women at court, or the bureau chiefs? if you do not have the secret of pleasing them, if they fail to find in you the kind of fool that suits them? You are an architect or a painter; well and good. But your talents must be made known. Do you suppose you can all of a sudden start exhibiting your work in the Salon? Unfortunately that is not the way it works! You have to go to the Academy; even there you need a sponsor in order to obtain a quiet place in the corner of a wall. Instead, leave your ruler and pencil with me, take a cab and drive from door to door; that is how one gains celebrity. Now, you must know that the doors of the great are guarded by swiss guards or porters who only understand one language, and their ears are in their palms. Would you like to teach what you have learned and become an instructor of geography, mathematics, languages, music, drawing? Even for that one must find pupils and consequently find friends who will sing your praises. Understand that it will be more important to be pretentious than skillful, and with no trade but your own you will always be considered ignorant.

[691:] See, therefore, how little you can depend on these fine resources, and how many other resources are necessary before you can use what you have got. And what will become of you from such base humiliation? Reverses will make you worse rather than better. More than ever the plaything of public opinion, how will you rise above the arbitrary prejudices on which your fate depends? How can you despise the vices and the lowness which you need to earn your living? You used to be dependent only on wealth; now you are dependent on the wealthy. You have only worsened your slavery and added to your misery. Now you are poor without being free. It is the worst state man can fall into.

[692:] But if, instead of rushing into into the higher forms of learning that can only feed the mind and not the body, you have recourse, whenever needed, to your hands and what your hands can do for you, all these difficulties disappear, all these strategems become useless. Your trade is ready when required. Uprightness and honor are no longer an obstacle to life. You have no need to become base and deceptive before the great, submissive and cringing before fools, a despicable flatterer of both, a borrower or a thief -- for there is little difference between them when one has nothing. Other people's opinions are no concern of yours; you need not pay court to any one; there is no imbecile to flatter, no flunkey to bribe, no woman to pay, or worse , to flatter. Let rogues conduct the affairs of state. In your lowly rank you can still be an honest man and yet get a living. You walk into the first workshop of your trade. "Master, I want work." "Friend, put yourself over there and get started." Before dinner-time you have earned your dinner. If you are diligent and sober, before the week is out you will have earned your keep for another week. You will have lived in freedom, health, truth, industry, and righteousness. Time is not wasted when it brings these returns.

[693:] I want absolutely that Emile learn a trade. "An honest trade, at least," you say. What do you mean by honest ? Is not every useful trade honest ? I would not want him to be an embroiderer, a gilder, or a varnisher like Locke's young gentleman. Neither would I make him a musician, an actor, or an author.[Note 9] With the exception of these and others like them, let him choose his own trade; I do not mean to thwart him in anything. I would rather have him be a shoemaker than a poet; I would rather he paved streets than make porcelaine flowers. But, you will say, policemen, spies, and hangmen are useful people. I say that it all depends on the government. But let that pass. I was wrong; it is not enough to choose an honest trade, it must be a trade which does not develop detestable qualities in the mind, qualities incompatible with humanity. To return to our original expression, let us choose an honest trade, but let us remember there can be no honesty without usefulness.

[694:] A famous writer of this century whose books are full of great schemes and narrow views was under a vow, like the other priests of his communion, not to take a wife. Finding himself more scrupulous than others with regard to his neighbour's wife, they say that he decided to employ pretty servants instead, and so did his best to repair the wrong done to the race by his rash promise. He thought it the duty of a citizen to breed children for the state, and so he made his children into artisans. As soon as they were old enough they were taught whatever trade they chose. Only idle or useless trades were excluded, such as that of the wigmaker -- who is never necessary and may any day now cease to be required since nature does not seem to get tired of providing us with hair.

[695:] This is the spirit that shall guide our choice of trade for Emile, or rather, not our choice but his. For the maxims he has imbibed make him despise useless things, and he will never be content to waste his time on labors that have no value; and he only knows the value of things from their real utility. He must have a trade that would be of use to Robinson on his island.

[696:] When we review with the child the productions of nature and of art, when we stimulate his curiosity and follow its lead, we have great opportunities of studying his tastes, his inclinations, his tendencies, and perceiving the first spark of genius, if he has one that is clearly marked. You must, however, be on your guard against the common error which mistakes the effects of circumstances for the ardour of genius, or imagines there is a decided inclination towards any one of the arts when there is nothing more than a spirit of emulation, common to men and monkeys, which impels them mechanically to do what they see others doing without knowing what it is good for. The world is full of artisans, and even more of artists, who have no natural talent for the art which they practice but into which they were driven in early childhood either through the conventional ideas of other people or because those around them were fooled by an apparent zeal that could have led them in a similar way to any other art they saw practised. This one hears a drum and fancies himself a general; that one sees a building and wants to be an architect. Every one is drawn towards the trade he sees others doing when he thinks it is highly estimed.

[697:] I once knew a footman who watched his master drawing and painting and took it into his head to become a designer and artist. From the moment he made this resolve he took up a pencil and then a brush which he never put down for the rest of his life. Without teaching or rules of art he began to draw everything he saw. Three whole years were devoted to these scribblings from which nothing but his duties could stir him, nor was he discouraged by the small progress resulting from his very mediocre talents. I have seen him spend the whole of a broiling summer in a little anteroom facing south, a room that felt suffocating even just to pass through. There he was seated, or rather nailed, all day to his chair, drawing a globe that was before him again and again and yet again with invincible obstinacy till he had reproduced the rounded surface to his own satisfaction. At last with his master's help and under the guidance of an artist he got so far as to abandon his livery and live by his brush. Perseverance substitutes for talent up to a certain point. He got so far, but no further. This honest boy's perseverance and ambition are praiseworthy; he will always be respected for his industry and steadfastness of purpose, but he will never get beyong painting panel friezes. Who would not have been deceived by his zeal and taken it for real talent? There is all the difference in the world between a liking and an aptitude. To make sure of real genius or real taste in a child calls for more accurate observations than is generally suspected, for the child displays his wishes not his capacity, and we judge by the former instead of considering the latter. I wish some judicious person would give us a treatise on the art of observing children. This art would be very important to know, but neither parents nor teachers have mastered its elements.

[698:] Perhaps we are laying too much stress on the choice of a trade. Because it is a question of manual work, this choice means little, and his apprenticeship is more than half accomplished already through the exercises which have up until now occupied him. What would you like him to do? He is ready for anything. He can handle the spade and hoe, he can use the lathe, hammer, plane, or file; he is already familiar with these tools which are common to many trades. He only needs to acquire sufficient skill in the use of any one of them to rival the speed, the familiarity, and the diligence of good workmen, and he will have a great advantage over them in suppleness of body and limb, so he can easily take any position and can continue any kind of movements without effort. Moreover his senses are acute and well-practised. He knows the principles of the various trades; to work like a master of his craft he only needs experience, and experience comes with practice. To which of those trades open to us will he give sufficient time to make himself a master of it? That is the whole question.

[699:] Give a man a trade that suits his sex, give a young man a trade that suits his age. Sedentary indoor employments that make the body tender and effeminate are neither pleasing nor suitable. No young boy ever aspired on his own to be a tailor; it is only through others' efforts that this feminine work attracts the sex for which it was not made.[Note 10] The needle and the sword can not be wielded by the same hand. If I were sovereign I would only allow needlework and dressmaking to be done by women and by cripples who are obliged to work at such trades. Assuming eunuchs to be necessary, I think the orientals were very foolish to make them on purpose. Why not be contented with those provided by nature, with those crowds of low people whose hearts nature has mutilated? There would be plenty to spare. Every weak, delicate, fearful man is condemned by nature to a sedentary life; he is fit to live among women or in their manner. Let him practice one of the trades that is right for them; and if there must be true eunuchs let those men who dishonour their sex by adopting trades unworthy of it be reduced to that state. Their choice proclaims an error of nature; correct it one way or other, you will have only done well.

[700:]I forbid to my pupil the unhealthy trades, but not a difficult or dangerous one. He will exercise himself in strength and courage. Such trades are for men not women, who claim no share in them. Are not men ashamed to encroach upon the women's trades?

[701:] In Italy women are not seen in shops, and to persons accustomed to the streets of England and France nothing could look gloomier. When I saw drapers selling ladies ribbons, pompons, net, and chenille, I thought these delicate ornaments very absurd in the coarse hands fit to blow the bellows and strike the anvil. I said to myself, "In this country women should set up as steel-polishers and armourers." Let each make and sell the weapons of his or her own sex; knowledge is acquired through use.

[702:] Young man, impress on your work the hand of man. Learn to wield with a vigorous arm the ax and the plane, to square a beam, climb up to the rooftops, position the pinacle, firm it up with rafters and tie-beams. Then call to your sister to come help you with your work just as she tells you to help her with her needlepoint.

[703:] I have said too much for my agreeable contemporaries, I know. But I sometimes let myself be carried away by my argument. If any man is ashamed to work in public armed with an adze or wearing a leather apron, I think him a mere slave of public opinion, ready to blush for having done well as soon as he is laughed at by others. But let us yield to parents' prejudices so long as they do not hurt the children. To honour trades we are not obliged to practise every one of them, so long as we do not think them beneath us. When the choice is ours and we are under no compulsion, why not judge the pleasantness, attractiveness, and suitability of the different professions within the same rank? Choose the pleasanter, more attractive and more suitable trade. Metal work is useful, more useful, perhaps, than the rest, but unless a some special reason draws me to it, I would not make your child into a blacksmith, a locksmith nor an ironworker. I do not want to see him a Cyclops at the forge. Neither would I have him be a mason, still less a shoemaker. All trades must be carried on, but when the choice is ours, cleanliness should be taken into account. This is not a matter of mere opinion; our senses are our guides. Finally, I do not like those stupid trades in which the workmen mechanically perform the same action without pause and almost without mental effort. Weaving, stocking-knitting, stone-cutting; why employ intelligent men on such work? It is merely one machine leading another.

[704:] All things considered, the trade I should choose for my pupil, among the trades he likes, is that of a carpenter. It is clean and useful; it may be carried on at home; it gives enough exercise; it calls for skill and industry, and while fashioning articles for everyday use, there is scope for elegance and taste.

[705:] If by chance the genius of your pupil was clearly directed toward the speculative sciences, then I would not blame you for giving him a trade consistent with his inclinations. He might learn, for example, the make mathematical instruments, eyeglasses, telescopes, etc.

[706:] When Emile learns his trade I want to learn it with him, for I am convinced he will never learn anything thoroughly unless we learn it together. So we shall both serve our apprenticeship, and we do not mean to be treated as gentlemen but as real apprentices who are not there for fun. Why should we not actually be apprenticed? Peter the Great was a ship's carpenter and drummer to his own troops; was not that prince at least your equal in birth and merit? You understand this is addressed not to Emile but to you, whoever you may be.

[707:] Unfortunately we cannot spend the whole of our time in the workshop. We are not only apprentice carpenters but apprentice men , and the apprenticeship of this last trade is more painful and longer than the other. How will we thus manage? Shall we take a master to teach us the use of the plane and engage him by the hour like a dancing-master? No, that would make us not apprentices but students, and our ambition is not merely to learn carpentry but to be carpenters. I am thus of the view that once or twice a week we should spend the whole day at our master's; we should get up early, be at our work before him, take our meals with him, work under his orders, and after having had the honour of supper with his family we may if we please return to sleep upon our own hard beds. This is the way to learn several trades at once, to learn to do manual work without neglecting our other apprenticeship .

[708:] Let us do things simply while doing them well. Let us not reproduce vanity by our efforts to combat it. To pride ourselves on having conquered prejudice is to succumb to prejudice. It is said that in accordance with an old custom of the Ottomans, the sultan is obliged to work with his hands, and, as every one knows, the handiwork of a king is a masterpiece. So he royally distributes his masterpieces among the great lords of the Porte and the price paid is in accordance with the rank of the workman. What I see wrong with this is not the so-called inconvenience it causes; on the contrary, that is an advantage. By compelling the lords to share with him the spoils of the people it is much the less necessary for the prince to plunder the people directly. Despotism needs some such relaxation, and without it that horrible government could not last.

[709:] The real evil in such a custom is the idea it gives this poor man of his own worth. Like King Midas he sees all things turn to gold at his touch, but he does not see whose ears start growing as a result. Let us keep Emile's own ears short, let us preserve Emile's hands from such lucrative talent. The price of what he himself makes will be based not on the worker but on the work. Never let his work be judged by any standard but that of the work of a master. Let it be judged by the work itself, not because it is his. If anything is well done, I say, "There is something that is well made," but do not ask who made it. If he himself says with a proud and self-satisfied air, "I made it," answer indifferently, "You or someone else, it doesn't matter. It's still a well-made work."

[710:] Good mother, be on your guard against the deceptions prepared for you. If your son knows many things, distrust his knowledge; if he is unlucky enough to be educated in Paris and to be rich, he is ruined. As long as there are clever artists he will have all their talents, but apart from his masters he will have none. In Paris a rich man knows everything; it is the poor who are ignorant. Our capital is full of amateurs, especially women, who do their work as M. Gillaume invents his colours. Among the men I know of three striking exceptions; among the women I know no exceptions, and I doubt if there are any. In general a man acquires a name in the arts just like he acquires official robes; he becomes an artist and a judge of art just like he becomes a lawyer and a magistrate.

[711:] Thus if it were once admitted that it is a fine thing to have a trade, your children would soon have one without learning it. They would become postmasters like the councillors of Zurich. Let us have no such ceremonies for Emile; no appearances, only reality. Let us not say what he knows, let him learn in silence. Let him make his masterpiece, but not be hailed as master. Let him prove himself to be a worker not by his title but by his work.

[712:] If up until now I have made myself understood, you ought to realise how through habits of bodily exercise and manual work I unconsciously give my pupil the taste for reflection and meditation in order to counteract in him the indolence which could result from his indifference to men's judgments and his freedom from passion. He must work like a peasant and think like a philosopher if he is not to be as idle as a savage. The great secret of education is to use the exercises of the body and those of the mind as relaxations of each other.

[713:] But beware of anticipating instructions which demand more maturity of mind. Emile will not be a workman for long before he feels for himself those social inequalities that he had at first only observed. He will want to question me in turn on the maxims I have given him, maxims he is able to understand. By receiving everything from me alone, in seeing himself so close to the condition of poor people, he will want to know why I am so far removed from it. Out of the blue he may ask me some scathing questions. "You are rich. You have told me so and I see it. A rich man owes his work to society because he is a man. But what are you doing for society?" What would a fine tutor say to that? I do not know. He would perhaps be foolish enough to talk to the child of the care he bestows upon him. As for me, the workshop will get me out of the difficulty. "My dear Emile that is a very good question; I will undertake to answer for myself at the time when you can yourself give an answer that satisfies you. Meanwhile I will take care to give what I can spare to you and to the poor, and to make a table or a bench every week so as not to be completely useless to everyone."

[714:] We have come back to ourselves. Here our child is ready to cease being a child and to return to his own individuality. Here he is feeling more than ever the necessity that attaches him to things. After having begun by exercising his body and his senses we have exercised his mind and his judgment. Finally we have joined together the use of his limbs and his faculties. We have made him an active and thinking being. In order to make him a man, it remains for us to make him a lovable and sensitive being, that is to perfect reason by sentiment. But before entering into that new order of thinge, let us glance back on the one we have just left and see as precisely as possible how far we have come.

[715:] At first our pupil had merely sensations, now he has ideas. He could only feel, now he judges. For from the comparison of many successive or simultaneous sensations and the judgment arrived at with regard to them, there springs a sort of mixed or complex sensation which I call an idea.

[716:] The way in which ideas are formed gives a character to the human mind. The mind which forms its ideas from real relations is a solid mind; the mind which contents itself with apparent relations is superficial. He who sees relations as they are has an exact mind; he who estimate them poorly has an inaccurate mind; he who concocts imaginary relations which have neither reality nor appearance is a madman; he who does not perceive any relation at all is an imbecile. The greater or lesser aptitude for comparing ideas and finding connections between them is that which gives to men more or less intelligence, etc.

[717:] Simple ideas consist merely of compared sensations. Simple sensations involve judgments, as do the complex sensations that I call simple ideas. In sensation, judgment is purely passive; it affirms that one feels what one feels. In perception or idea, judgment is active; it connects, compares, it determines relations not determined by the senses. That is the main difference, but it is great . Nature never deceives us; it is always we who deceive ourselves.

[718:] I see some one giving an ice-cream to an eight-year-old child. He brings the spoon to his mouth without knowing what it is and, struck by the cold, cries out, "Ah, it burns!" He experiences a sharp sensation; he knows no sensation sharper than the heat of fire and believes that that is what he feels. However, he is mistaken. Cold hurts, but it does not burn; and these two sensations are not the same, for those who have experienced both do not confuse them. So it is not the sensation that deceives him but the judgment he forms with regard to it.

[719:] It is just the same with those who see a mirror or some optical instrument for the first time, or enter a deep cellar in the depths of winter or at midsummer, or dip a very hot or cold hand into tepid water, or roll a little ball between two crossed fingers. If they are content to say what they really feel, their judgment, being purely passive, cannot go wrong; but when they judge according to appearances, their judgment is active; by induction it compares and establishes relations that are not really perceived. Then such people are deceived or can be deceived. In order to correct or prevent the error one needs experience.

[720:] Show your pupil the clouds at night passing between himself and the moon; he will think the moon is moving in the opposite direction and that the clouds are stationary. He will think this through a hasty induction because he generally sees small objects moving in relation to larger ones, and the clouds seems larger than the moon whose distance is beyond his reckoning. When he watches the shore from a moving boat he falls into the opposite mistake and thinks the earth is moving because he does not feel the motion of the boat and considers it along with the sea or river as one motionless whole, of which the shore, which appears to move, forms no part.

[721:] The first time a child sees a stick half immersed in water he thinks he sees a broken stick; the sensation is true and would not cease to be true even if he knew the reason of this appearance. So if you ask him what he sees, he replies, "A broken stick," for he is quite sure he is experiencing this sensation. But when deceived by his judgment he goes further and, after saying he sees a broken stick, he affirms that it really is broken he says what is not true. Why? Because he becomes active and judges no longer by observation but by induction; he affirms what he does not perceive, i.e., that the judgment he receives through one of his senses would be confirmed by another.

[722:] Since all our errors arise in our judgment, it is clear that if we had no need for judgment we should not need to learn. We should never be liable to mistakes; we would be happier in our ignorance than we can be in our knowledge. Who can deny that those who are learned know a thousand true things that ignorant people will never know? Are the learned for thus any nearer truth? On the contrary, the further they progress the further away from it they get. Since the vanity of their judgment outpaces their enlightenment, each truth that they learn comes at the expense of a hundred false judgments. Every one knows that the learned societies of Europe are nothing but public schools for lying; and there are assuredly more errors in the Academy of Sciences than in a whole tribe of Huron Indians.

[723:] Because the more men know the more they are mistaken, the only means of avoiding error is ignorance. Form no judgments and you will never be wrong. This is the lesson of nature as well as of reason. Outside of the small number of immediate and clearly perceptible things related to us, we naturally have a profound indifference to all the rest. A savage will not turn his head to watch the working of the finest machinery or all the wonders of electricity. "What does that matter to me?" is the saying most common to the ignorant and most convenient to the wise.

[724:] But unluckily this phrase will no longer suit us. Everything matters to us since we are dependent on everything, and our curiosity naturally increases with our needs. This is why I attribute much curiosity to the philosophe and none to the savage. The latter needs no help from anyone; the former needs every one, especially admirers.

[725:] You will tell me I am going beyond nature. I think not. She chooses her instruments and orders them, not according to opinion but to need. Now a man's needs change according to his circumstances. There is a great difference between a natural man living in a state of nature and a natural man living in society. Emile is no savage to be banished to the desert; he is a savage made to live in cities. He must know how to make his living there, how to make the best of its inhabitants, and how to live if not like them at least with them.

[726:] Because in the midst of so many new relations that he will have to depend on it will be necessary inspite of himself for him to judge, teach him therefore how to judge well.

[727:] The best way of learning to judge well is is the way that tends to simplify our experiences and even enable us to dispense with them altogether without falling into error. Hence it follows that after having for a long time verified the experience of one sense by that of another, we must still learn to verify each sense experience by itself. Then each of our sensations will become an idea, and this idea will always correspond to the truth. This is the sort of accomplishment with which I have tried to fill this third age of human life.

[728:] This method of procedure demands a patience and circumspection of which few teachers are capable and without which the pupil will never learn to judge. If for example, when your pupil is mistaken by the appearance of the broken stick you rush to take the stick out of the water in order to show him his error, you may perhaps undeceive him; but what have you taught him? Nothing more than he would soon have learnt for himself. That is not what one must do!. It is less a question of teaching him a truth than of showing him how to set about discovering it for himself. To teach him better you must not be in such a hurry to correct his mistakes. Let us take Emile and myself as an illustration.

[729:] To begin with, any child educated in the usual way could not fail to answer the second of my imaginary questions in the affirmative. He will say, "That is certainly a broken stick." I very much doubt whether Emile will give the same reply. Seeing no necessity for being a scholar or pretending to be one, he is never in a hurry to draw conclusions. He only judges on the basis of evidence and he is far from having it on this occasion. For he knows how much our judgements of appearances are subject to illusion, even if it is only a simple question of perspective.

[730:] Moreover, since he knows by experience that my most frivolous questions always have some purpose that is not at first obvious, he has not developed the habit of answering blindly. On the contrary, he is on his guard. He pays attention; he examines things with great care before answering. He never gives me an answer unless he is satisfied with it himself, and he is hard to satisfy. Finally neither of us take any pride in merely knowing the truth of things but only in avoiding mistakes. We should be more ashamed to deceive ourselves with bad reasoning than to find no explanation at all. "I do not know" is a phrase that suits us both fine and that we repeat so often that it costs neither one of us anything to use it. But whether he gives the silly answer or whether he avoids it by our convenient phrase "I do not know," my answer is the same. Let us see, let us examine it.

[731:] This stick immersed half way in the water is fixed in an upright position. To know if it is broken as it seems to be, how many things must be done before we take it out of the water or even touch it?

1 First we walk round it, and we see that the broken part follows us. So it is only our eye that changes it; looks do not make things move.

2 We look straight down on that end of the stick which is above the water. Then the stick is no longer bent,_ the end near our eye exactly hides the other end. Has our eye set the stick straight?

3 We stir the surface of the water; we see the stick break into several pieces, move in zigzags and follow the ripples of the water. Can the motion we gave the water suffice to break, soften. or melt the stick like this?

4 We make the water recede, and little by little we see the stick straightening itself as the water sinks. Is not this more than enough to enlighten us as to the fact and reveal refraction? So it is not true that our eyes deceive us, for nothing more has been required to correct the mistakes attributed to it.