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profoundly influenced by J.J. Rousseau (1712-1778). The influence of Rousseau upon
Kant was profound, and it came out most forcefully when Kant was about 40 years old, as
notes written in Kant’s own copy of his essay Observations written around 1764, where
he claimed that Rousseau stood to the moral world as Newton did to the natural world.
The only picture in Kant's otherwise sparsely decorated home was a portrait of Rousseau
that he hung over his writing desk. Biographers tell a legend that Kant, who never
interrupted his daily walk, which he used to take precisely at the same time every
afternoon, did so in order to continue his study of Rousseau's book Emile (published in
1762) which he later called his ‘most important’ work and its publication in 1762 as an
event comparable to that of French Revolution.
For Rousseau, throughout the history of man the development of his faculties and the
progress of his mind has made man more civilized, but nevertheless unhappy and
immoral, and therefore he suggests that, he requires a healing education which reclaims
man to himself.
Emile is a novel consisting of a series of stories, and its teaching comes to light only when
one has grasped each of these stories in its complex detail and artistic unity. Emile is a
truly great book, one that lays out for the first time and with the greatest clarity and
vitality the modern way of posing the problems of psychology in education. In this work,
Rousseau in his imagination, takes an ordinary boy called Emile and experiments with the
possibility of making him into an a morally and intellectually free man who has overcome
the bourgeois sentiment which is regarded as almost identical with the the achievement
of “genuine personality” and ultimately of the realization of political goal of “true
democracy”.
Who is a bourgeois? It is french term and it means, first of all a person who is from the
middle class who adheres to the more commonly held conservative and non-reactionary
attitude towards life. Perhaps, more deeply, the bourgeois is an mediocre man who does
not quite like to remain mediocre, and in some way hopes to achieve excellence; but
apparently lacking the sufficient strength for the conquest of essential moral and spiritual
values opts instead for superficial and purely material ones.
According to Rousseau, the bourgeois is someone who separates his own good from the
common good. His good requires society, in the sense that, he can exploit others to his
advantage while depending on them. The bourgeois comes into being when men no
longer believe that there exists such a thing as ‘common good’. Rousseau in effect says
that, man is not naturally a political being; which means, he has no inclination toward
liberty, equality, justice and fraternity. By nature man cares only for self-preservation, and
all of his faculties are directed to that end. That said, men have a natural right to do what
is conducive to their self-preservation.
All of this Rousseau holds to be true. Rousseau agrees, contrary to the conventional
wisdom, with Machiavelli, who said that ‘all men are bad’, with the qualification that they
are bad when judged from the standpoint of the common good. The appeal to 'common
good' makes demands on men contrary to their natural impulses and are therefore both
unfounded and ineffective. If these standards are removed and man's natural impulses
are accepted rather than blamed, it turns out that with the cooperation of these
inclinations, a stable social order can be attained.
Rousseau does not believe that the obligation to obey the laws of civilized society can be
derived from self-interest. In every decisive instance, the sacrifice of the common good to
the private good follows precisely from the laws of nature. Society produces liars and
hypocrites who make promises they do intend to keep, and who pretend to be genuinely
concerned for others while hiding behind the mask of altruistic slogans, thus using other
men as means to their private ends.
Hence, Civilized society becomes merely the struggle for the pursuit of power and control
over things and especially control over men. In the course of history, eventually men
learnt that they are concerned almost exclusively about their own lives much more than
about their family, friendship, country, or even honor.
For a child, the notion that necessity governs his world is crucial, because nature is moved
by the power of necessity and the most important things in life are necessary. All our
imagination must inevitably submit to necessity, whereas necessity itself cannot be
changed or manipulated by the imagination. Before a man comes to terms with his
desires and wishes, he must have understood and accepted necessity. Otherwise, he is
likely to spend his life obeying and fearing gods or trying to become one. Rousseau was
the first to recognize that, without the order established by necessity, the realm of
freedom can have no meaning. Either reward and punishment or vanity and jealousy that
motivate ordinary education are not needed; nothing will be accepted on authority; but
the evidence of his senses and the power of necessity alone will be his authorities and
eventually make him inwardly free not because of, but in spite of society's constraints.
Thus Rousseau's education of the young Emile confines itself to fostering the
development of the faculties immediately connected with self-preservation. His desire for
the pleasant and avoidance of the painful are given by nature, his senses are keen and a
natural means to those ends. The physical sciences, like mathematics, physics, chemistry
and astronomy are human inventions which, if solidly grounded on pure experience of the
senses, extend the range of the senses and protect them from the errors of imagination.
The teacher's responsibility is, in the first place, to let the senses develop in relation to the
objects appropriate to them; and, secondly, to encourage the learning of the sciences as
the almost natural outcome of the use of the senses. Rousseau calls this methodology,
particularly with reference to the part that has to do with the senses, negative theory of
education. All animals go through a similar scholarship of life, but with man something
intervenes that impedes or distorts nature's progress, and therefore in a specifically
negative theory of education, human effort and foresight is required.
Rousseau tells us that the child cannot be given commandments. He would not
understand even the most reasonable restriction on his will as anything other than the
expression of the selfishness and unkindness of the one giving the commandments. The
child must always do what he wants to do. This, we recognize, is the dictum of
modern-day progressive education, what is forgotten is the full formula, that while the
child must always do what he wants to do, he should want to do only what the teacher
wants him to do. Since an uncorrupt will does not rebel against necessity, and the teacher
can manipulate the appearance of necessity, a true master can determine the will of the
child without sowing the seeds of antagonism and resentment. He presents natural and
inevitable necessity in palpable form to the child so that eventually he learns to live in
accordance with his nature, prior to understanding it.
A child spends first 6-7 years in the hands of women, most likely the mother, and the
child is a likely victim of her vices, not to mention of his own. After having made him
superficially learn this or that- after having burdened his memory either with words he
cannot understand or with things that are good for nothing to him; after having stifled his
nature by vices that one has caused to be aroused in him-this superficial being is put in
the hands of a school teachers who complete the development of so-called education,
whose foundation the teacher finds already well formed and teaches him everything,
except to know himself, except to make proper use of his faculties, except to know how
to live and to make himself truly happy. Finally when this child, both a slave and a tyrant,
full of facts and figures and bereft of common-sense, frail in body and soul alike, is cast
out into the world, showing out there his utter lack of skill, his swollen pride, and all his
vices, he becomes the basis for our deplorable human misery and perversity. This has
been our mistake all along; that he is to become the man of our whims and imagination.
If you think through all the rules of education followed in practice, you will find most of
them misconceived, especially those concerning virtues and morals. The only effective
moral education of the young child, is establishment of the moral rule that he should
harm no one. This moral rule cooperates with the intellectual rule that he should know
how to be ignorant or in other words, that he is to have no beliefs; which implies that if at
all, only clear and distinct evidence should ever command his belief. Neither passions nor
dependencies should compel him to believe in something.
Whatever knowledge the child has, should be relevant to his need for self-preservation,
which is relatively small and can be easily satisfied. Therefore, in accordance with the
spirit of scientific method, a child's will to affirm never exceeds his capacity to prove or
firmly establish what he affirms.
Emile at fifteen cares no more for his father than his dog. A child who did would be
motivated by fear of punishment or desire for reward induced by dependency. Rousseau
has made Emile free of those passions by keeping him self-sufficient, and he has thus
undermined the economic foundations of civil society. Since Rousseau agrees that man
has no natural inclination to civil society and the fulfillment of social obligation, he must
find some other selfish natural passion that can somehow be used as the basis for a
genuine-as opposed to a spurious, competitive-concern for others. Such a passion is
necessary in order to provide the missing link between the individual and disinterested
respect for law or the rights of others, which is what is meant by true morality.
Rousseau finds such a solution in the sexual passion. It necessarily involves other
individuals and results in relations very different from those following from fear or love of
material gain. God, love, and politics and civilization can become "culture" when it is
motivated and organized by sublimation of sexual passion.
Rousseau takes it for granted that sex is naturally only a thing of the body. As a simply
natural phenomenon, it is not more significant or interesting than eating. In fact, since
natural man is primarily concerned with his survival, sex is of secondary importance
inasmuch as it contributes nothing to the survival of the individual. But because it is
related to another human being, therefore being liked and preferred to others becomes
important in the sexual act. The conquest, mastery, and possession of another's will thus
also become central to it, and what was originally bodily also becomes almost entirely
imaginary. This semi-folly leads to the extremes of alienation and mutual exploitation.
Rousseau's meaning is admirably expressed by Kant, who, following Rousseau, indicated
that there is a distinction between what might be called natural puberty and civil puberty.
Natural puberty is reached when a male is capable of reproduction. Civil puberty is
attained only when a man is able to love a woman faithfully, rear and provide for children,
and participate knowledgeably and loyally in the social order which protects the family.
But the advent of civilization has not changed the course of nature; natural puberty
occurs around 15; civil puberty, if it ever comes to pass, can hardly occur before the age
of 25. This means that there is a profound tension between natural desire and the
demands of civilization. In fact, this is one of the finest examples of the fracture caused in
man by civilization.
What Rousseau attempts to do is to make the two puberties coincide, to transform the
desire for sexual relations into a desire for marriage and a willing submission to the laws
of civil behavior without suppressing or blaming that original desire.
Such a union of desire and duty Kant called ‘true culture’. Rousseau effects this union by
establishing successively two passions in Emile which are sublimations of sexual desire
and which are, hence, not quite natural, one might say, but in accordance to law of
nature: Compassion and Love.
At the age of 15, a young child is full of restless energy and becomes sensitive. In
becoming sensitive to the feelings of others and in needing them, his imagination is
awakened and he becomes aware that others are also like him. Until now he was simply
indifferent to other human beings, although he knew that he too was a human being. If
one wishes to restrict such a child from developing the passions of selfishness and vanity
which provoke the desire to harm others for one's advantage; he must always look at
men, whom he thinks to be less happy or in a less favorable position than himself. In
addition, if he thinks such misfortunes could indeed happen to him also, he will feel all the
more pity for the sufferers. This simple recognition of our equality and our common
vulnerability dampens the hard-heartedness, harsh competitiveness and vanity of those
who are in a more favorable position. Compassion is an outcome of the sentiment of
equality, rather than any self-interest or fear of personal death, and it is this fact that
draws men together in the sweet bond of common brotherhood.
Emile's curiosity to find out about all of great Roman heroes of Plutarch's "The lives" and
his readiness to compare his life over against their lives fuels his study. Rousseau expects
that the first study of education in compassion will reveal the vanity of the heroes'
aspirations and cause revulsion at their tragic failures. Emile's solid, natural pleasures, his
cheaply purchased hard-labour, courage and self-sufficiency, his lack of the passion to
rule over others, will cause him to despise their love of glory and pity the tragic ends of
the heros. The second level of the education in compassion produces contempt for what
is usually considered great in this world, not a slavish contempt founded in envy,
indignation, and resentment, but the contempt stemming from a conviction of excellence
which admits of honest feelings of universal brotherliness and empathy, which is the
precondition of compassion. The old way of using heroes in education was to make the
student dissatisfied with himself and rivalrous with the hero. Rousseau uses them to make
his student content with himself and compassionate toward the heroes. The old way
alienated the child and made him prey to authorities whose titles he could not judge.
Self-satisfaction of egalitarian man is what Rousseau promotes. But he is careful to insure
that this satisfaction is only with a good or natural self.
Reading is again the means of accomplishing the third and final part of the education in
compassion. This time the texts are fables which contain a moral teaching. For example,
in the fable of the fox and the crow, a child would always identify himself with the fox
who cheats the crow to get the cheese rather than with the crow who loses the cheese,
for a child understands nothing about vanity and a great deal about cheese.
Emile's first principle of action was pleasure and pain; his second, after the birth of reason
and his learning the sciences, was utility; now compassion is added to the other two, and
concern for others becomes part of his sense of self-interest. The first stage of Emile's
introduction to the human condition shows him that most men suffer; the second, shows
apart from the poor, crippled and diseased men, the great ones suffer as well and hence
are equal to the clearly miserable ones; and the third, that he himself is potentially a
sufferer, perhaps saved only by his education.
For all its important consequences, in its own right, compassion within the context of
Emile's education is only a milestone on the way to his fulfillment of duties as a husband
and a father. Its primary function is to make Emile social while remaining free from vices.
Emile learns that the peak of sexual longing is the love of God mediated by the love of a
woman. Sublimation of sensual passion finally operates through a transition from the
physical to the metaphysical. Today, speech has lost its power because it cannot refer to
a world with deep human significance. In Greek and Biblical antiquity the world was full of
meaning put there by the great and terrible deeds of gods and heroes. But now the world
has been deprived of its meaning by the age of Enlightenment. Thus men can only affect
one another by the use of force or the profit motive. The language of human relations has
lost its foundations. He proceeds to inform Emile what the greatest pleasure in life is. He
explains to him that what he desires is sexual intercourse with a woman, but he makes
him believe that his object contains ideas of virtue and beauty without which she would
not be attractive, and without which she would be repulsive. His bodily satisfaction
depends upon his beloved's spiritual qualities; therefore Emile longs for the beautiful.
The modern philosophers with whom Rousseau began, have notably unsexual teachings.
Their calculating, fear-motivated men are individuals, not directed towards others,
towards bonding and the self-forgetting implied in them. Such men have flat souls. They
see nature as it is; and, since they are unerotic, they are also unpoetic. Rousseau, a
philosopher-poet like Plato, tried to recapture the poetry in the world. So, imagination,
once banished, returns to take the heightened importance.
From imagination thus purified and exalted comes the possibility of Emile's first real
relationship with another human being, i.e., a freely chosen enduring union between
equals based upon reciprocal affection and respect, each treating the other as an end in
himself.
This completes Emile's movement from nature to society, a movement unbroken by alien
motives such as fear, selfishness, vanity, or coercion. He has an overwhelming need for
another, but he is also aware that the other must be the embodiment of his ideal of
beauty, and his interest in her partakes of the disinterestedness of the love of the
beautiful.
Moreover, it is not quite precise to say that he loves ‘an other’, for he will not be making
himself hostage to an alien will and thus engaging in a mutual struggle for mastery. He
will recognize in her his own highest aspirations, and she will complete him without
alienating him. If Emile and Sophie can be constituted as a single unit and thereby each
one overcoming his/her narcissism, then Rousseau will have shown how the building
blocks of a society are formed. Individuals cannot be the basis of a real community but
families can be.
Rousseau predicted as an almost inevitable result of the bourgeoisification of the world,
the emerging rationalism and egalitarianism would tend to destroy the sexual differences
just as they were leveling class and national distinctions. Man and woman, husband and
wife, and parent and child would become roles, not natural qualities; and as in all
role-play, and as we know very well, roles can be changed. Eventually, the only unaltered
fragment of nature remaining, and thus dominating, would be the selfish individual,
striving for self-preservation, comfort, and seeking power after power. Marriage and the
family would decay and the sexes be assimilated into a common pool. Children would
become burdens and not fulfillments.
First, Rousseau insists that there will be no family if women are not primarily wives and
mothers. Second, he argues that there can be no natural, i.e., whole, social man if women
are essentially the same as men. Two similar beings, who united out of mutual need
would exploit one another, each using his partner as a means to his own ends, always
putting himself ahead of him or her. There would be a clash of wills and a struggle for
domination and mastery of one over the other, unless they simply performed the sexual
act like wild beasts and separated immediately after. Human beings would be caught up
in the divide between their attachment to themselves and their duty to others. The
project undertaken by Rousseau was to overcome or avoid this tension.
What he proposes is that the two sexes are different and complementary, each imperfect
and requiring the other in order to be a single whole being. He tries to show that male and
female bodies and souls fit together like pieces in a puzzle, and he does so in such a way
as to make his conclusions compatible with natural science, on the one hand, and
freedom and equality on the other. In particular, Rousseau argues that women rule the
heart of man by submitting to his will and knowing how to make him will what she needs
to submit to. In this way man's freedom of will is preserved without woman's will being
denied. Further, Rousseau argues, a woman naturally cares for her children; thus a man,
loving her exclusively, will also care for the children. So it is that the family, which is the
microcosm of society, is constituted. None of this is found in the state of nature, but it is
in accord with natural potentialities and reconciles the results of civilization with them.
The courtship of Emile and Sophie is merely their discovery of the many facets of the
essential man and the essential woman and how well suited they are to one another. They
reveal to one another each of the aspects of their respective nature and education.
If these had been the same, they would not really need each other or know of love, which
is the recognition of an absence in oneself. Each would be a separate machine whose only
function is to preserve itself, making use of everything around it to that end. The primary
aim of the education of civilized man and woman is to prepare them for one another.
Such education is Rousseau's unique educational innovation.
First of all, father's authority to command his son is based neither on force, nor tradition,
nor age, nor on supposed superior wisdom nor divine right. It is based solely on mutual
consent, since the legitimacy of the social institution of family is supported by the fact
that, son truly believes that the father is benevolent and interested only in son's
happiness; happiness as the son himself conceives of it, not as the father or society might
wish it to be. For son as a grown up adult, the decisive step is to transform the external
authority, however intimate-into an internal one; it occurs at the moment when he is
ready to see that it is not the father who is commanding, but he himself-that he is
obeying a law he has in fact has set for himself.
------------------------------------------------
"God makes all things good; man meddles with them and they become evil".
"Everything is good as it leaves the hand of the 'author of things'; everything degenerates
in the hands of man."
Our wisdom is slavish prejudice, our rituals consist in control, constraint and compulsion.
Civilised man is born and dies a slave. The infant is bound up in swaddling clothes, the
corpse is nailed down in his coffin. All his life long man is imprisoned by our institutions.
Each of us is thus formed by three kinds of masters. Education comes to us from nature
or from men or from things. Now, of these three different educations, the one coming
from nature is in no way in our control; that coming from things is in our control only in
certain respects; of the three that coming from men is the only one of which we are truly
the masters. Even of it we are the masters only by hypothesis.
The newborn baby needs to stretch out and move its limbs in order to arouse them from
the inactivity in which, drawn up in a little ball, they have for so long remained inside the
womb. They are stretched out, it is true, but they are prevented from moving. Thus, the
impulse of the internal parts of a body which tends to growth finds an insurmountable
obstacle to the movements that impulse asks of the body. The baby swaddled from head
to toe constantly makes useless efforts which exhaust their energy and retard their
physiological progress. He was less cramped, less constrained, less compressed in the
amniotic fluid of the womb than he is in his diapers. Even the head is subjected to caps. It
seems that we are afraid just in case that he appears to be alive. I don't see what he
gained by being born.
The inaction, the constraint in which a baby's limbs are kept can only hinder the
circulation of the blood, of the humors, prevent the baby from strengthening himself,
from growing, and cause his constitution to degenerate. In the places where these
extravagant precautions are not taken, men are all tall, strong, and well proportioned. The
countries where children are swaddled teem with hunchbacks, cripples, men with stunted
or withered limbs, men suffering from rickets, men misshapen in every way. For fear that
bodies be deformed by free movements, we hurry to deform the children by putting them
into a press.
From the moment that the child breathes on leaving its womb, do not suffer his being
given other confinements which keep him more restricted; no caps, no belts, no
swaddling; loose and large diapers which leave all his limbs free and are neither so heavy
as to impede his movements nor so hot as to prevent him from feeling the impressions of
the air. Put him in a large, well-padded cradle, where he can move at ease and without
danger. When he begins to grow stronger, let him crawl around the room. Let him spread
out, stretch his little limbs. You will see them gaining strength day by day. Compare him
with a well-swaddled child of the same age; you will be surprised at the difference in their
progress.
The only habit that a child should be allowed is to have no habits at all. Do not carry him
on one arm more than the other; do not accustom him to give one hand rather than the
other, to use one more than the other, to want to eat, sleep, or be active at the same
hours, to be unable to remain alone night or day. Prepare from afar the reign of his
freedom and the use of his initiative by leaving natural habit to his body, by putting him in
the condition always to be master of himself and in all things to do his will, as soon as he
has one.
Why should a child's education not begin before he speaks and understands, since the
very choice of objects presented to him is fit to make him timid or courageous? I want him
habituated to seeing new objects, ugly, disgusting, peculiar animals, but little by little,
from afar, until he is accustomed to them, and, by dint of seeing them handled by others,
he finally handles them himself. If during his childhood he has without fright seen toads,
snakes, crayfish, he will, when grown, without disgust see any animal whatsoever. There
are no longer frightful objects for whoever sees such things every day.
Man is born to suffer; pain is the means of his preservation. His childhood is happy,
knowing only pain of body. These bodily sufferings are much less cruel, much less painful,
than other forms of suffering, and they rarely lead to self-destruction. It is not
inflammatory arthritis which make a man kill himself, but mental suffering that leads to
despair and depression. We pity the sufferings of childhood; we should pity ourselves; for
our worst sorrows are of our own making.
Fix your eyes on nature, follow the path traced by her. She keeps children at work, she
hardens them by all kinds of difficulties, she soon teaches them the meaning of pain and
grief. They cut their teeth and are feverish, sharp colics bring about convulsions, they are
choked by fits of coughing and tormented by worms, evil humours corrupt the blood,
germs of various kinds ferment in it, causing dangerous eruptions. Sickness and danger
play the chief part in infancy.
A child will bear changes which a man cannot bear, the muscles of the one are soft and
flexible, they take whatever direction you give them without any effort; the muscles of the
grown man are harder and they only change their accustomed mode of action when
subjected to violence. So we can make a child strong without risking his life or health, and
even if there were some risk, it should not be taken into consideration. Since human life is
full of dangers, nothing is better than to face them at a time when they can do the least
harm?
Men are made not to be crowded into anthills but to be dispersed over the earth which
they should cultivate. The more they come together, the more they are corrupted. The
infirmities of the body, as well as the vices of the soul, are the unfailing effect of this
overcrowding. Man is, of all the animals, the one who can least live in herds. Men
crammed together like sheep would all perish in a very short time. Man's breath is deadly
to his kind. This is no less true in the literal and physiological sense than merely figurative
one. Cities are the dark and unfathomable pit for human species. At the end of a few
generations the races perish or degenerate. They must be renewed, and it is always the
countryside which provides for this renewal.
A mother's position is more certain than that of the father, her duties are more trying; the
right ordering of the family depends more upon her, and she is usually fonder of her
children. There are occasions when a son may be excused for lack of respect for his
father, but if a child could be so unnatural as to fail in respect for the mother who bore
him and nursed him at her breast, who for so many years so utterly devoted herself to his
care, such a monstrous creature should be smothered at once as unworthy to live. If we
would like to restore all men to their primal duties, begin with the mothers; the results will
surprise you.
Thus, from the correction of this single abuse would soon result a general reform; nature
would soon have reclaimed all its rights. Let women once again become mothers, men will
soon become fathers and husbands again.
A father has done but a third of his task when he begets children and provides a living for
them. He owes man to humanity, citizen to the state. A man who can not pay this
threefold debt and neglects to do so is guilty, more guilty, perhaps, if he pays it in part
than when he neglects it entirely.
He has no right to be a father if he cannot fulfil a father's duties. Poverty, pressure of
business, mistaken social prejudices, none of these can excuse a man from his duty,
which is to support and educate his own children. If a man of any natural feeling neglects
these sacred duties he will repent it with bitter tears and will never be comforted. A child
will be better educated by a sensible though ignorant father than by the cleverest master
in the world. For enthusiasm will compensate for the lack of knowledge, rather than the
knowledge for lack of enthusiasm.
The natural man lives for himself; he is the individual, dependent only on himself and on
his interests. The citizen is but the numerator of a fraction, whose value depends on its
denominator; his value depends upon the whole, that is, on the community. Good social
institutions are those best fitted to make a man unnatural, to exchange his independence
for dependence, to merge the individual into the group, so that he no longer regards
himself as individual, but as a part of the whole, and is only conscious of the common life.
He who would preserve the supremacy of natural feelings in social life knows not what he
asks for. Ever at war with himself, hesitating between his wishes and his duties, he will be
neither a man nor a citizen. He will be of no use to himself or to others. Our inner conflicts
are caused by the contradictions in between our individual vis-a-vis our social life. Drawn
this way by nature and that way by man, compelled to yield to both forces, we make a
compromise and reach neither goal. We go through life, struggling and hesitating, and
die before we have found peace, useless alike to ourselves and to others. Forced in a war
against nature or the social institutions, one must choose between making oneself a man
or a citizen, for one cannot make both at the same time.
To be an individual and always one - one must have integrity, that is a man must act just
as he speaks; and speak just as he thinks; he must make his own decisions and that too in
a lofty style, and always stick to it. I am waiting to be shown this miracle so as to know
whether he is an individual or a citizen, or is it that he somehow goes about pretending to
be both at the same time.
Prior to the calling of his parents, is nature's call to human life. Living is the job I want to
teach him. On leaving my hands, he will, I admit, be neither a magistrate nor soldier nor a
priest. He will, in the first place, be a man. All that a man should be, he will if need be, will
know how to be as well as anyone; and fortunate or misfortunate circumstances may try
as it may to make him change places, but he will always be in his own place.
We must therefore look at the general rather than the particular, and consider our
student as man in the abstract, a man exposed to all the unpredictable changes and
chances of mortal human life. When every generation overturns the work of its
predecessor, can we conceive a more senseless plan than to educate a child as if he
would never leave his room, as if he would always have his servants around him?
If a poor creature as such takes a single step up or down he is lost. This is not teaching
him to endure pain and hardship; it is rather training him to feel it.
One thinks only of the safety one's child. That is not enough. One ought to teach him to
preserve himself as a man, to bear the blows of fate, to brave richness and poverty, to
live, if he has to, in freezing Iceland or on Malta's hot and burning rocks. You may very
well take precautions against his dying, nevertheless, as all living creatures do, he will
have to die. It is less a question of safeguarding him from dying than of helping him
strengthen himself to live fully.
To live is not just to breathe; it is to act; it is to make full use of our organs, our senses, of
all our faculties which give us the true meaning of our existence. Life consists less in
number of days than in the keen sense of living. A man maybe buried at the age of
hundred and may never have lived at all. He would have fared much better had he died
young.
All children are weaned from mother's milk too soon. The time when they should be
weaned is indicated by teething, and teething is commonly difficult and painful. With a
machine-like instinct the child then regularly brings to his mouth whatever he has in his
hand in order to chew on it. It is thought that one facilitates the operation by giving him
some hard bodies, such as ivory or a bolt, or a teething ring. I believe this is a mistake.
These hard bodies applied to the gums, far from softening them, make them callous,
harden them, and prepare a more difficult and more painful cutting. Let us always take
instinct as our example, and notice how puppies are seen to exercise their growing teeth
not on pebbles, iron or bones, but on wood, leather, rags, soft matter upon which their
tooth leaves an imprint.
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FIRST MAXIM.--Far from being too strong, children are not strong enough for all the
claims of nature. Give them full use of such strength as they have; they will not abuse it.
SECOND MAXIM.--Help them and supply the experience and strength that they lack
whenever the need is of the body.
THIRD MAXIM.--In the help you give them confine yourself to what is really needful,
without granting anything subject to vice or unreason; for they will not be tormented by
vices if you do not call it into existence, seeing it is no part of his nature.
FOURTH MAXIM--Study carefully their speech and gestures, so that at an age when they
are incapable of deceit you may discriminate between those desires which come from
nature and those which spring from perversion.
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Remember that before daring to undertake the education of the child and to attempt to
make him a man, first one must have made oneself a man. One must find within oneself
the example the child ought to take for his own.
While the child is still without knowledge, there is time to prepare everything that he
could potentially come in contact with, so that only objects appropriate for him to see,
meet his first glances. Begin by making yourself respectable to everyone- by respecting
others, make yourself served- by serving others; and make yourself loved by loving
others- so that eventually each one is pleased to see you.
A parent and especially the teacher will not be the child's master if he is not the master of
the social environment in their close proximity as well; and this kind of authority too, will
never be sufficient if it is also not based on a high regard for virtue and lofty ethical
behavior on his part.
It is never a question of emptying one's purse and giving away much of one's fortunes.
The essence of the matter is that money, by itself has never made anyone more loved. It's
fair assessment to say that- in one's daily affairs, one ought not to be miserly and
hard-hearted, nor just superficially feel sorry for someone's poverty that is within one's
capacity to relieve. You may, if you want, open your stuff-box in order to give all that you
intend to; but if you also do not open your heart, hearts of your fellow men will always
remain closed to you. It is your time, your care, your affection, indeed, it is you, yourself,
that must be put forth in genuine giving; for no matter whatever else you may do, or give
to others, people will never feel that your money is you.
There are other precious and rare tokens of genuine concern and benevolence which
produce a far greater effect and are incomparably more valuable than any physical gifts.
Works of compassion, and genuine charity relieve more suffering than does pots of
money. How many unfortunate people, how many sick people; need consolation more
than handouts? How many oppressed people need protection more than money?
Therefore, be just, humane, and benevolent; and only then; when you have restored men
to their dignity, without fear and without hesitation proclaim yourself to be the guardian
of the oppressed, the voiceless, and the unfortunate.
All our languages are works of art. Whether there was a language natural and common to
all men has long been a subject of research. Doubtless there is such a language, which we
may call the original language, and it is the one children speak before knowing how to
speak. This language is not articulate, but it is accented, sonorous and intelligible. The
habits of our sophisticated languages has made us neglect that language to the point of
forgetting it completely. Let us study children, and we shall soon relearn it with them.
Nurses are our masters in this language. They understand everything their nurslings say;
they respond to them; they have quite consistent dialogues with them; and, although they
pronounce words, these words are perfectly useless; it is not the sense of the word that
children understand but the accent and intonation which accompanies it.
To the language of the voice is joined that of gesture, no less energetic. This gesture is
not in children's weak hands; it is on their look on their faces. It is surprising how much
expression these ill-formed faces already have. Their features change from one instant to
the next with an inconceivable rapidity. You see a smile, desire, fright come into being
and pass away like so many flashes of lightning. Each time you believe you are seeing a
different look on their face. Their facial muscles are certainly more mobile than ours.
On the other hand, their dull eyes say almost nothing. Such should be the character of the
signs they give at an age when one has only bodily needs. The expression of the
sensations is in grimaces; the expression of sentiments is in glances.
To pride oneself on not accentuating one’s speech is to pride oneself on depriving
sentences of their vitality and grace. Accentuating and intonation is the soul of speech. It
gives speech sentiment and truth. Accentuation lies less than the word does. This is
perhaps why well-brought-up people fear it so much. From the practice of saying
everything in the same tone came the practice of gossip and mocking people without
their being aware of it.
A man who learns to speak only in his bedroom will fail to make himself understood at the
head of a battalion and will hardly impress the people in a riot. First teach children to
speak to men; they will know how to speak to women when they have to.
I would have the first words he hears few in number, distinct and often repeated, while
the words themselves should be related to things which can first be shown to the child.
That fatal facility in the use of words we do not understand begins earlier than we think.
In the schoolroom the student listens to the verbiage of his master as he listened in the
cradle to the babble of his nurse. I think it would be a very useful education to leave him
in ignorance of both.
Always speak correctly before children, let them never be so happy with any one as with
you, and be sure that their speech will be imperceptibly modelled upon yours without any
correction on your part. All these little faults of speech, which you are so afraid the
children will acquire, are mere trifles; they may be prevented or corrected with the
greatest ease, but the faults which are taught them when you make them speak in a low,
indistinct, and timid voice, when you are always criticising their tone and finding fault with
their words, are never cured. A man who has only learnt to speak in society of fine ladies
could not make himself heard at the head of his troops, and would make little impression
on the rabble in a riot. First teach the child to speak to men; he will be able to speak to the
women when required.
Let the child's vocabulary, therefore, be limited; it is very undesirable that he should have
more words than ideas, that he should be able to say more than he thinks. One of the
reasons why peasants are generally shrewder than townsfolk is, I think, that their
vocabulary is smaller; they have few ideas, but those few are thoroughly grasped.
Children who are forced to speak too soon have no time to learn either to pronounce
correctly or to understand what they are made to speak; while left to themselves they first
practise the easiest syllables, and then, adding to them little by little some meaning which
their gestures explain, they teach you their own words before they learn yours. This is a
message to adults that they do not acquire your words until they have understood them.
When children begin to speak, they cry less. This is a natural progression; where one
language is substituted for the other. As soon as they can say with words that they are in
pain, why would they say it with cries, except when the pain is too intense for speech to
express it? If they continue to cry then, it is the fault of the people around them. As soon
as Emile has once said, "It hurts," very intense pains indeed will be needed to force him to
cry.
If a child is delicate and sensitive, if he naturally starts crying for nothing, he soon makes
his cries useless and ineffective, and will soon dry up their source. So long as a child cries,
I do not go up to him, but I run as soon as he has stopped. Soon his way of calling me will
become very quiet or, at the most he will shout out a single cry. It is by the effects of their
cries over adults, that children form their habits and judgements; indeed, there is no other
habit for them. Whatever injury a child may do to himself, it is very rare that he cries just
because he is alone, unless he hopes and expects to be heard by someone.
So far as I know, no child, left to himself, has ever been known to kill or maim itself, or
even to do itself any serious harm, unless it has been foolishly left on a high place, or
alone near the fire, or within reach of dangerous weapons. What is there to be said for all
the paraphernalia with which the child is surrounded to shield him on every side so that
he grows up at the mercy of pain, with neither courage nor experience, so that he thinks
he will be killed by a pin-prick and faints at the sight of blood?
With our foolish and pedantic methods we are always preventing children from learning
what they could learn much better by themselves, while we neglect what we alone can
teach them. Can anything be sillier than the pains taken to teach them to walk, as if there
were any one who was unable to walk when he grows up through his nurse's neglect?
How many we see walking badly all their life because they were ill taught?
The wise man knows how to stay in his true position, and therefore needs no commands
from others; but on the contrary, a child, does not know his true position, and still less
would he be able to keep to it. But, among grown-ups a child is offered a thousand
escapes by which to run away from it. It is for those who govern a child, to keep him in his
true position, and at the same time admit that this, is not an easy and straightforward
task. He ought to be neither a beast nor man, but a child. For this, it is necessary that he
feels his weakness, but not so much so that he suffers from it. It is also necessary that, in
his position as a child he be dependent on others and himself see that he obeys; but not
that he obeys blindly and finally that he never commands others.
He sees that he is only subject to another's will, by virtue of his needs which he can not
fulfill himself, and because others see not only what is useful to him much better than he
does, but also what could potentially be either beneficial or harmful towards his
preservation and growth. As a rule, no one, not even the father, has a right to command
the child, when it is not for the good of the child.
Eventually, you need not give a child any orders at all, absolutely none. Do not even let
him think that you claim any authority over him. Let him only know that he is weak and
you are strong, that his condition with respect to yours, puts him at your mercy; let this be
perceived, learned, and felt by your child. Give him, not what he wants, but what he
needs. Let there be no question of obedience for him or tyranny for you. Supply the
strength he lacks just so far as is required for freedom, not for power and domination, so
that he may receive your help with a sort of shame, and look forward to the time when he
may dispense with them altogether and achieve the honour of self-help.
Instead of keeping him locked up in a stuffy room, take him out into a play-garden every
day; let him run about, let him struggle and fall again and again, the oftener the better; he
will learn all the sooner to pick himself up. The delights of freedom will make up for many
bruises. My child will hurt himself oftener than yours, but he will always be happy; your
child may receive fewer injuries, but they are always thwarted, constrained, and sad. I
doubt whether they are any better off. What is to be thought, therefore, of that cruel
education which sacrifices the present to an uncertain future, that burdens a child with all
sorts of restrictions and begins by making him miserable, in order to prepare him for
some far-off happiness which he may never enjoy?
All of children's activities are instincts of the body for its growth in strength; but you
should regard with suspicion those wishes which they cannot carry out for themselves,
those which others must carry out for them. Then you must distinguish carefully between
natural and artificial needs, between the needs of budding vices and the needs which
spring from the overflowing life just described.
Our misery consists in the disproportion between our desires and our powers. A
conscious being whose powers were equal to his desires would be perfectly happy. True
happiness consists in decreasing the difference between our desires and our powers, in
establishing a perfect equilibrium between the power and the will. Only then, when all its
forces are employed, will the soul be at rest and man will find himself in his true position.
On the other hand, the more nearly a man's condition approximates to this state of nature
the less difference is there between his desires and his powers, and happiness is therefore
less remote. Lacking everything, he is never less miserable; for misery consists, not in the
lack of things, but in the needs which they inspire.
The world of reality has its bounds, the world of imagination is boundless; as we cannot
enlarge the one, let us restrict the other; for all the sufferings which make us really
miserable arise from the difference between the real and the imaginary. Except health,
vigour, and a good conscience, all the good things of life are a subject matter of divergent
opinions; except bodily suffering and guilt, all our sufferings are imaginary. You will tell
me this fact is well known and commonplace; I admit it, but its practical application is no
commonplace, and it is with practice only that we are now concerned.
By striving to increase our happiness we change it into misfortunes. If a man were
content to live, he would live happy; and he would therefore be good, for what would he
have to gain by such a vice?
Do you want to find men of a true courage? Look for them in the places where there are
no doctors, where they are ignorant of the consequences of illnesses, where they hardly
think of death. Naturally man knows how to suffer with constancy and dies in peace. It is
doctors with their prescriptions, philosophers with their precepts, priests with their
exhortations, who debase his heart and make him unlearn how to die.
Almost everything is foolish and contradictory in human institutions. We worry about our
life more in proportion to its losing its great depth and significance. Old men regret life
more than young people; they do not want to lose the preparations they have made for
enjoying it; and at the age of 60 it is most cruel thing to die before having begun to live.
Half knowledge and shallow wisdom beset us to think about death and what lies beyond
it; and they thus create the worst of our sufferings. Here it’s better to remember that the
wise man bears life's sufferings all the better because he knows he must die.
Man is credited with a strong desire for self-preservation, and this desire exists; but we
fail to perceive that this desire, as felt by us, is largely the work of man. In a natural state
man is only eager to preserve his life while he has the means for its preservation; when
self-preservation is no longer possible, he resigns himself to his fate and dies without vain
torments. Nature teaches us the first law of resignation. Animals, like wild beasts, make
very little struggle against death, and meet it almost without a murmur. When this natural
law is overthrown reason establishes another, but few discern it, and man's resignation is
never so complete as nature's.
The first tears of children are prayers. If one is not careful, they soon become orders.
Children begin by getting themselves assisted; they end by getting themselves served.
Thus, from their own weakness, which is in the first place the source of the feeling of their
dependence, is subsequently born the idea of power and domination. But since this idea
is excited less by their needs than by our services to them, at this point moral effects
whose immediate cause is not in nature begin to make their appearance; and one sees
already why it is important from the earliest age to disentangle the secret intention which
dictates the gesture or the scream.
In early childhood, when memory and imagination are still inactive, the child is attentive
only to what affects his senses at the moment. Since his sensations are the first raw
materials of his knowledge, to present them in an appropriate order to him, is to prepare
his memory to provide them one day to his understanding in the same order.
But inasmuch as he is attentive only to his sensations, it suffices at first to show him quite
distinctly the connection of these same sensations with the objects which cause them. He
wants to touch everything, handle everything. Do not oppose yourself to this restlessness.
It is suggestive to him of a very necessary apprenticeship; it is thus that he learns to feel
the hotness, the coldness, the hardness, the softness, the heaviness, the lightness, of
bodies, and to judge their size, their shape, and all their sensible qualities by looking,
feeling, listening, particularly by comparing sight to touch, by estimating with the eye the
sensation that they would make on his finger.
When the child stretches out his hand without saying anything, he believes he will reach
the object because he does not estimate the distance. He is mistaken. But when he
complains and screams in reaching out his hand, he is no longer deceived as to the
distance; he is ordering the object to approach or you to bring it to him. In the first case
carry him to the object slowly and with small steps. In the second act as though you do
not even hear him. The more he screams, the less you should listen to him. It is important
to accustom him early not to give orders either to men, for he is not their master, or to
things, for they do not hear him. Thus, when a child desires something that he sees and
one wants to give it to him, it is better to carry the child to the object than to bring the
object to the child. He draws from this practice a conclusion appropriate to his age, and
there is no other means to suggest it to him.
I have already told you what you ought to do when a child cries for this thing or that. I will
only add that as soon as he has words to ask for what he wants and accompanies his
demands with tears, either to get his own way quickly or to override a refusal, he should
never have his way. If his words were prompted by a real need you should recognise it
and satisfy it at once; but to yield to his tears is to encourage him to cry, to teach him to
doubt your kindness, and to think that you are influenced more by his begging than your
own good-will. Be careful of refusing, but, having refused, do not change your mind.
Above all, beware of teaching the child empty phrases of politeness, which serve as magic
spells to control those around him to his will, and to get him what he wants at once.
Indeed I maintain that to enjoy great happiness a child must experience slight ills; such is
his nature. Too much bodily comforts corrupts the morals. A man who knew nothing of
suffering would be incapable of tenderness and sympathy towards his fellow-creatures
and ignorant of the joys of Compassion; he would be hard-hearted, unsocial, and may
become a very monster among men. Thus the child, who has only to ask and have from
adults, thinks himself the master of the universe; he considers all men as his slaves; and
when you are at last compelled to refuse, he takes your refusal as an act of rebellion, for
he thinks he has only the right to command and never to obey. All the reasons you give
him, while he is still too young to reason, are so many pretences in his eyes; they seem to
him only unkindness; the sense of injustice embitters his disposition; he hates everyone.
Though he has never felt grateful for kindness, he resents all opposition.
Do you know the surest means of making your child miserable? It is to accustom him to
getting everything he asks for; since his desires grow constantly due to the ease of
satisfying them, sooner or later powerlessness will force you, in spite of yourself, to end
up with a refusal. And this unaccustomed refusal will give him more painful to him than
being deprived of what he desires. First, he will want the cane you are holding; soon he
will want your watch; after that he will want the bird flying by; he will want the star he
sees shining; he will want everything he sees. Without yourself being God, how will you
satisfy him?
I have known children brought up like this, who expected you to knock something down,
to give them a toy on the toy rack etc.; when they could not get their way they screamed
and cried and would pay no attention to anyone. In vain, everybody strove to please
them; as their desires were stimulated by the ease with which they got their own way,
they set their hearts on impossibilities, and found themselves face to face with opposition
and difficulty, pain and grief. Scolding, sulking, or in a rage, they wept and cried all day.
Were they really so greatly favoured? Weakness, combined with love of power, produces
nothing but stupidity and suffering. One spoilt child beats the table; another whips the
sea; they may beat and whip long enough before they find contentment.
Such children are used to find that everything gives way to them; what a painful surprise
to enter society and meet with opposition on every side, to be crushed beneath the
weight of a universe which they expected to move at will. Their insolent manners, their
childish vanity, only draw down upon them mortification, scorn, and mockery; they
swallow insults like water; sharp experience soon teaches them that they have realised
neither their true position nor their strength. And what is there more offensive, more
unsuitable, than the sight of a sulky or imperious child, who commands those about him,
and impudently assumes the tones of a master towards those without whom he would
perish?
To make a man reasonable is the cornerstone of good education, and yet you claim to
train a child through his reason! You begin at the wrong end, you make the end the
means. If children understood reason they would not need education, but by talking to
them from their earliest age in a language they do not understand you accustom them to
be satisfied with words, to question all that is said to them, to think themselves as wise as
their teachers. Most of the "moral lessons" which can be given to children may be
reduced to this "formula":
Master- You must not do that.
Child- Why not?
Master- Because it is wrong.
Child- Wrong! What is wrong?
Master- What is forbidden to you.
Child- Why is it wrong to do what is forbidden?
Master- You will be punished for your disobedience.
Child- I will do it when no one is looking.
Master- We shall watch over you.
Child- I will hide.
Master- We shall ask you what you were doing then.
Child- I shall tell a lie.
Master- You must not tell lies.
Child- Why must not I tell lies?
Master- Because it is wrong, and so on....
I have already said your child must not get what he asks, but what he needs; he must
never act from obedience, but from necessity. The very words OBEY and COMMAND will
be excluded from his vocabulary, still more those of DUTY and OBLIGATION; but the
words strength, necessity, weakness, and constraint must have a large place in it. Act in
such a way that while he only notices external objects his ideas are confined to
sensations; let him only see the physical world around him. If not, you may be sure that
either he will pay no attention to you at all, or he will form fantastic ideas of the moral
world of which you babble, ideas which you will never get rid of as long as he lives.
Always remember that childhood is the sleep of reason. It is no part of a child's business
to know right and wrong, to perceive the reason for a man's duties. Childhood has its own
ways of seeing, thinking, and feeling; nothing is more foolish than to try and substitute it
with our ways. Use the power of "necessity" with children and reasoning with men; this is
the natural order; the wise man needs no laws.
What is the power of "necessity"? It is, whatever the child wants to do or know about, he
will never even attempt what is beyond his powers, for he has learnt by experience what
those powers are; his means will always be adapted to the ends in view, and he will rarely
attempt anything without the certainty of success; his eye are keen and true; he will not
be so stupid as to go and ask other people about what he sees; he will examine it on his
own account, and before he asks he will try every means at his disposal to discover what
he wants to know for himself.
The only moral lesson which is suited for a child - the most important lesson for a lifetime
- is this: "Never hurt anybody." The very rule of 'doing good', if not subordinated to this
rule, is dangerous, false, and contradictory. Who is there who does no good?
Everyone does at least some good, the evil doer as well as the righteous; the evil doer
makes one man happy at the expense of the misery of a hundred, and from there spring
all our misfortunes. The noblest virtues are negative, they are also the most difficult, for
they make little pomp and ceremony, and do not even make room for that pleasure of
vanity which is so dear to the heart of man.
Cease to blame others for your own faults; children are corrupted less by what they see
than by your own teaching. With your endless preaching, moralising, and pedantry, for
one idea you give your students, believing it to be good, you give them twenty more
which are good for nothing; you are full of what is going on in your own minds, and you
fail to see the effect you produce on theirs.
If you talk to children of their duties, and not of their rights, you are beginning at the
wrong end, and telling them what they cannot understand, what cannot be of any interest
to them. Also, give your child no verbal lessons; he should be taught by experience alone;
never punish him, for he does not know what it is to do wrong; never make him say,
"forgive me," for he does not know how to do wrong. Wholly amoral in his actions, he can
do nothing morally wrong, and he deserves neither punishment nor reproach; and
remember that your lessons should always be in deeds rather than words, for children
soon forget what they say or what is said to them, but not what they have done or what
has been done to them.
Let him find necessity in things, not in the vices of man; let "necessity" be the force, not
authority. If there is something he should not do, do not forbid him, but prevent him
without explanation or reasoning; what you give him, give it at his first word without
prayers or tantrum, above all without conditions. Give willingly, refuse unwillingly, but let
your refusal be irrevocable; let no tantrums move you; let your "NO" once uttered, be an
iron wall, against which the child may exhaust his strength some 5-6 times, but in the end
he will try no more to overthrow it. Thus you will make him patient, equable, calm, and
resigned, even when he does not get all he wants; for it is in man's nature to bear
patiently with the nature of things, but not with the ill-will of another.
Every means has been tried to train the child, except one, the only one which might
succeed - well-regulated freedom. Do not undertake to bring up a child if you cannot
guide him merely by the laws of what he can or cannot do. The limits of the possible and
the impossible are alike unknown to him, so they can be extended or contracted around
him at your will. Without a murmur he is restrained, urged on, held back, by the hands of
necessity alone; he is made adaptable and trainable by the mere force of "necessity"
things, without any chance for vice to spring up in him; for passions do not arise so long
as they have accomplished nothing.
I prefer to be a paradoxical man than a prejudiced one. The most dangerous period of
human life is that from birth to the age of 12. This is the time when errors and vices
germinate without one's yet having any instrument for destroying them; and by the time
the instrument of reason develops, the roots of vices are so deep a root that it is too late
to rip them out. If children jumped all at once from the breast of their mothers to the age
of reason, the education they are given might be suitable for them. But, according to the
law of nature, they need an entirely contrary one. Teachers and parents ought to do
nothing with the spirit of child until all of its faculties have developed, because while the
spirit is as yet blind, it cannot perceive the torch of reason you are presenting to it or
follow it’s path that maps out across the vast plain of ideas; a path which is so faint even
to the best of eyes.
Therefore, the education of the earliest years should be merely negative. It consists, not in
teaching virtue or truth, but in preserving the heart from vice and from the spirit of error.
If you could bring your student to the age of 12, strong and healthy, but unable to tell his
right hand from his left, his comprehension would be open to reason as soon as you
began to teach him. Free from prejudices and free from most habits of mind, there would
be nothing in him to contradict the effects of your labours. In your hands he would soon
become the wisest of men; by doing nothing to begin with, you would end with a prodigy
of education.
Man is an imitator; as animals are. The propensity for imitation belongs to well-ordered
nature, but in human society it unfortunately degenerates into vice. The monkey imitates
man whom he fears and does not imitate the lower animals whom he despises, and
therefore judges to be good what is done by a living being better than he. Among us, that
is human beings, on the other hand, our jokers and comedians of every sort imitate the
beautiful in order to degrade it, to make it sound ridiculous. They seek, in the feeling of
their own pettiness and worthlessness, to bring down the level of what surpasses them in
worth or quality, or if they make efforts to imitate that which they admire, one sees in
their choice of their imitations and impressions, the shallow taste of the imitators;
because they want to make an impression on others or to get applause for their talent, far
more than to make themselves any good or wiser. Therefore, the foundation or source of
conformity and imitation in human beings, always comes from that deep desire to escape
from ourselves. If a true teacher succeeds in his enterprise, his students surely will not
have this desire. A true master, therefore, gives up the apparent good which conformity
and imitation can produce.
I am almost certain that a child will know, probably on his own, how to read and write
perfectly before the age of 10, precisely because it makes very little difference to the
teacher what he knows before the age of 12.
But a teacher would rather prefer that he never knew how to read if this skill has to be
bought at the price of all that can possibly make it useful. Of what use will reading be to
him if it has been made repulsive to him forever? The more I insist on the passive method
of learning, the stronger I will see the child’s objections grow. If the child learns nothing
from the teacher, he will learn from others. If the teacher does not restrict errors by
means of truth, a child will inevitably learn lies. The prejudices you are afraid of giving
him, he will receive from everyone and everything around him. They will enter by all his
senses: either they will corrupt his reason even before it is formed, or his mind, stupefied
by long inactivity, will be too indulgent. The lack of the habit of thinking in childhood
stupifies and takes away the faculty of reason for the rest of his life.
The child's individual bent, which must be thoroughly known before we can choose the
fittest moral training. Every mind has its own form, in accordance with which it must be
controlled; and the success of the pains taken depends largely on the fact that he is
controlled in this way and no other. Oh, wise man, take time to observe nature; watch
your student well before you say a word to him; first leave the germ of his character free
to show itself, do not constrain him in anything, its much better to see him as he really is,
instead of artificially imposing on him what he should be.
Passions imbued with great drive and momentum produce a marked effect on the child
who is witness to them because their symptoms are such as to strike a child's senses and
force him to pay attention. Anger, in particular, is so noisy in its symptoms that one
cannot fail to notice it if one is within its visage. It need not be asked whether this is the
occasion for a teacher or parent to start out on a fine lecture. Now, no fine speeches!
Nothing at all; not a single word. Let the child come to you; impressed by what he has
seen, he will not fail to ask you questions. The answer is easy; it is drawn from the very
things which have appealed to his senses. For instance, he sees a flushed face, flashing
eyes, a threatening gesture, he hears cries; everything shows that a poor man is ill. Tell
him plainly, without drama or mystery, "This poor man is ill, he is in a fever." You may take
the opportunity of giving him in a few words, some idea of what is disease and its effects;
for that too belongs to nature, and is one of the bonds of necessity which he must
recognise.
The first idea which must be given to a child is less that of freedom and more of private
property; and for him to be able to conceive of this idea, a child must have something
that belongs to him. To tell him these are his clothing, his furniture, his toys, is to say
nothing to him, since, although he makes use of these things, he knows neither why nor
how he came to make use of them. To say to him that he has them because ‘they were
given to him by someone’ hardly helps in this matter, for, in order to give, one must first
have the articles in question. Therefore, private property exists prior to a child's
conception of something as his, and it is this principle of private property one wants to
explain to him, not to delve into convention of giving gifts, as the child cannot know as
yet know what such social conventions are.
Therefore, in order to teach private property to a child, the thing to do therefore is to go
back to the origin of private property, for it is there that the first germ of it ought to be
born. The child, living in the village, will have gotten some notion of manual labor in the
fields. For this only watchful eyes and leisure are necessary; in most cases he will have
both. Private property belongs to persons of every age, especially a child, who wants to
create, imitate, produce, in effect, is eager to show signs of his own capabilities. This way
of inculcating primary notions in children one sees how the idea of private property
naturally goes back to the right of the first occupant by labor, which is clear, distinct,
simple, and within the child's reach. From there onwards, to grasp the right to ownership
and also the right to exchange is only the next step.
Your ill-tempered child destroys everything he touches. Do not vex yourself; put anything
he can spoil out of his reach. He breaks the things he is using; do not be in a hurry to give
him more; let him feel the want of them. He breaks the windows of his room; let the wind
blow upon him night and day, and do not be afraid of his catching cold; it is better to
catch cold than to be reckless. Never complain of the inconvenience he causes you, but
let him feel it first. At last you will have the windows mended without saying anything. He
breaks them again; then change your plan; tell him dryly and without anger, "The
windows are mine, I took pains to have them put in, and I mean to keep them safe." Then
you will shut him up in a dark place without a window. At this unexpected proceeding he
cries and howls; but no one pays attention. Soon he gets tired and changes his tone; he
laments and sighs; a servant appears, the rebel begs to be let out of the room.
Deceit and falsehood are born along with conventions and duties. As soon as we can do
what we ought not to do, we try to hide what we should not have done. As soon as
self-interest makes us give a promise, a greater self-interest may make us break it; it is
merely a question of doing it with impunity; we naturally take refuge in concealment and
falsehood. As we have not been able to prevent vice, we must punish it. The sorrows of
life begin with its mistakes.
I have said enough to make it understood that punishment as generally understood, must
never be inflicted on children, but it should always happen to them as a natural
consequence of their own bad actions. Thus you will not give a child fine speeches
against lying; and you will not, precisely so to speak, punish them for having lied; but you
will arrange and rearrange circumstances so that all the bad effects of lying-such as not
being believed when someone tells the truth, or of being accused of the evil that one in
fact did not commit; Although a child fiercely denies when one he lied, nevertheless he
comes face to face against their inevitable consequences.
First, let us understand what lying is for children. There are two sorts of lies: the de facto
lie, which is with respect to the past; the de jure lie, which is with respect to the future.
The former takes place when someone denies having done what one has in fact done, or
when someone claims having done what one has in fact not done, and in general when
one deliberately speaks contrary to the truth of the matter in question. The other takes
place when one deliberately makes a promise that one does not intend to keep, and, in
general, when one shows an intention contrary to the true intentions that one has. These
two kinds of lies can sometimes be joined in a single one, but let us consider them here
under the aspect of their differences.
A child who is aware of the need he has of others' help, and who never fails to experience
their kindness, has no interest in deceiving them; on the contrary, he has a palpable
interest in their seeing things as they are, for fear that they might make mistaken
prejudices against him. It is, therefore, clear that the de facto lie is not natural to children.
But, it is the law of obedience which produces the necessity of lying, because since
obedience is irritating to children, it is secretly done away with as much as possible, and
the immediate interest is in avoiding punishment or scolding triumphs over the distant
interest of revealing the truth. In the suggested natural and free education why would
your child lie to you? What has he to hide from you? You do not scold him; you do not
punish him for nothing; since in committing themselves they do not know what they are
doing; therefore you demand nothing from him. Why would he not tell you everything he
has done as naively as he would his little friend? A child in a frank confession can see no
more danger from one side than the other.
The de jure lie is much less natural, since promises of things to do or to forgive are
conventional acts which depart from the state of nature and impair their freedom.
Moreover, all promises made by children are in themselves void; when they pledge
themselves they do not know what they are doing, for their narrow vision cannot look
beyond the present. A child can hardly lie when he makes a promise; for he is only
thinking how he can get out of the present difficulty, any means which has not an
immediate result is the same to him; when he promises for the future he promises
nothing, and his imagination is as yet incapable of projecting him into the future while he
lives in the present. If a child could escape a whipping or get a packet of chocolates by
promising to throw himself out of the window tomorrow, he would promise on the spot.
This is why the law disregards all promises made by minors i.e. children less than the age
of 18.
Children's lies are therefore entirely the work of their parents and teachers, and to teach
children to speak the truth is nothing less than to teach them the art of lying. In your
enthusiasm to rule, to control, and teach them, you never find sufficient means at your
disposal; you wish to gain fresh influence over their young minds by baseless maxims and
fine speeches, by unreasonable precepts; and you would rather think that, they knew
their lessons and told lies, than leave them ignorant and truthful. I feel almost certain that
a well educated child will not know for many years what it is to lie, and that when he does
find out, he will be astonished and unable to understand what can be the use of it. Thus,
It's quite clear that the less I make the child's welfare dependent on the will or the
opinions of others, the less will it be in his interest to lie.
In even the most careful teaching, the teacher commands and believes that he governs
the child. Ironically, it is actually the child who governs. The child cleverly uses what adults
demand from him to obtain from them what pleases him; indeed he is clever enough that
he always knows how to make you pay a week of obligingness for an hour in which you
tied him up. At every instant small treaties or agreements must be made with him. These
treaties, which you propose in your fashion and he executes in his, always tilt to the
direction of his whims and fancies, especially when you are so clumsy as to promise him
something as your part of the bargain which he is quite sure of getting whether or not he
fulfills his part. Here, an adult can see that the child usually reads the master's mind much
better than the master reads the child's heart.
Take an opposite route with your your child. Let him always believe he is the master, and
let it always be as such. There is no enslavement so perfect as that which can keep the
false appearance of freedom. This way, the child’s will itself is enslaved. The poor child
who knows nothing, who can do nothing, who has no learning, is he actually not at your
mercy? Do you not control, with respect to the child, everything which surrounds him?
Are you not the master of subtly manipulating him as you please? Are not his efforts, his
games, his pleasures, his pains, all in your hands without his knowing it? Surely, he ought
to do only what he wants; but he ought to want only what you want him to do. He ought
not to take a single step without your having foreseen it; he ought not to open his mouth
without your knowing what he is going to say.
In any study whatsoever the abstract symbols are of no value without the idea of the
things that they symbolise. Yet the education of the child in confined to those abstract
symbols, while no one ever succeeds in making him understand the thing signified. You
think you are teaching him what the world is like; he is only learning the map; he is taught
the names of rivers, towns, countries, which have no existence for him except on the
paper before him.
Parents and teachers, I am setting before you a difficult task, the art of training children
without precepts, and doing everything without doing anything at all. This art is, I must
confess, an effort beyond your years, but it's the only road to success. You speak of
childish vices; you are mistaken. Children's vices are never the work of nature, but of bad
discipline; they have either obeyed or given orders, and I have said again and again, they
must do neither. Your child will have the vices you have taught him; it is fair to say that
you should bear the punishment of your own faults. "But how can I cure them?" you say;
to that my answer is, it may still be done by better conduct on your own part and great
patience.
The indifference of children towards meat is one proof that their taste for meat is
unnatural; their preference is for vegetable foods, such as milk, pastry, fruit, etc. Beware
of changing this natural taste and making children flesh-eaters, if not for their health's
sake, for the sake of their character; for how can one explain away the fact that great
meat-eaters are usually more fierce and more cruel than other men; this has been
recognised at all times and in all places.
You may be sure that children will never eat too much and will never have indigestion; but
if you keep them hungry half their time, when they do plan to escape your vigilance, they
will take advantage of it as far as they can; they will eat till they are sick, they will gorge
themselves till they can eat no more. Our appetite is only excessive because we try to
impose on it rules other than those of nature, opposing, controlling, prescribing, adding,
or subtracting; the scales are always in our hands, but the scales are the measure of our
vices and not of our stomachs.
What is the cause of man's weakness? It is to be found in the disproportion between his
strength and his desires. It is our passions that make us weak, for our natural strength is
not enough for their satisfaction. To limit our desires comes to the same thing, therefore,
as to increase our strength. When we can do more than we want, we have strength
enough and to spare, we are really strong.
Human intelligence is finite, and not only can no man know about everything, he cannot
even scantily acquire all the knowledge of others. Since the contrary of every false
proposition is truth, there are as many truths as falsehoods. We must, therefore, choose
what to teach as well as when to teach it. Some of the information within our reach is
false, some is useless, some merely serves to inflate the ego of its possessor. The small
store of knowledge which really contributes to our well-being alone deserves the serious
study of a wise man, and therefore a child who is to be wise, must know not merely ‘what
is’, but also ‘what is useful’.
Let the senses be the only guide for the first workings of reason for a child. No book but
the world, no teaching but that of the facts. The child who reads ceases to think, he only
reads. He is acquiring a bunch of abstract words not knowledge. Teach your student to
observe the phenomena of nature; you will soon awaken his curiosity, but if you wish to
have his curiosity grow, do not be in too great a hurry to satisfy this curiosity. Put the
problems before him and let him solve them himself. Let him know nothing just because
you have told him, but because he has learnt it for himself. Let him not be taught science,
let him discover it for himself. If ever you substitute authority for reason he will cease to
reason; he will be a mere plaything of other people's thoughts.
As a general rule - never substitute the symbol for the actual thing signified, unless it is
impossible to show the thing itself; for the child's attention is so taken up with the symbol
that he will forget what it signifies. Remember that this is the essential point in my
method - Do not teach the child many things, and never let him form inaccurate or
confused ideas. I don't care if he knows nothing provided he is not mistaken, and I only
acquaint him with truths to guard him against the falsehoods he might put in their place.
Reason and sound judgment comes slowly and one-by-one, prejudices and false ideas
like flock of birds come to us in crowds, and from these a child must be protected.
If he asks questions let your answers be enough to awaken his curiosity but not enough to
satisfy it; above all, when you find him talking at random and overwhelming you with silly
questions instead of asking for relevant information, at once refuse to answer; for it is
clear that he no longer cares about the matter in hand, but wants to make you a slave to
his questions. Consider his true MOTIVES rather than his WORDS. This warning, which
was scarcely needed before, becomes of supreme importance when the child begins to
reason.
There is a series of abstract truths by means of which all the sciences are related to
general principles and are developed each one on the earlier, called deductive reasoning,
and is the method of the philosophers. We are not concerned with it at present. There is
quite another method, called inductive reasoning by which every concrete example
suggests another and always points to the next in the causal chain. This succession,
which stimulates the curiosity and so awakens the attention required by every
subsequent object or event, and is the order followed by most men, and it is the right
order for all children.
Let the child do nothing because he is told; nothing is good for him but what he himself
recognises as good. When you are always urging him to see beyond his present
understanding, you think you are exercising a foresight which you really lack. To provide
him with useless tools which he may never require, you deprive him of man's most useful
tool-- common-sense. If you would have him docile as a child; he will be a credulous dupe
when he grows up. You are always saying, "What I ask is for your own good, though you
cannot understand it." or "How does it matter to me whether you do it or not; my efforts
are entirely for your betterment." All these fine speeches with which you hope to make
him good, are preparing the way, so that in future the visionary, the tempter, the
charlatan, the rascal, and every variety of fool may catch him in his snare or draw him into
his own stupidity.
In the first place do not forget that it is rarely your business to suggest what he ought to
learn; it is for him to want to learn, to seek and to find it. You should put it within his
reach, you should skilfully awaken the desire and provide him with means for its
satisfaction. So your questions to him should be few and well-chosen, and as he will
always have more questions to put to you than you to him, you will always have the
advantage and will be able to ask all the more often, "What is the use of that question?"
Moreover, as it matters little what he learns, provided he understands it and knows how
to use it, as soon as you cannot give him a suitable explanation give him none at all. Do
not hesitate to say, "I have no good answer to give you; I was wrong, let us forget the
subject."
Children do not appreciate verbal explanations and pay little attention to them, nor do
they remember them. Things! Events! I cannot repeat it too often. We lay too much stress
upon words; parents and teachers babble, and our children follow our example. The
surest way to raise him above prejudice and to base his judgments on the logical and
concrete relationship between things, is to put him in the place of a solitary man, and to
judge all things as they would be judged by such a man in relationship to their own sense
faculties.
The man who clearly sees the whole, sees where each part should be; the man who sees
one part clearly and knows it thoroughly may be a learned man, but the former is a wise
man, and if you remember, the goal is that it is wisdom rather than knowledge that we
hope to acquire.
A child is not as big as a man. He has neither a man's strength nor his reason. But he sees
and hears as well, or very nearly as well, as a man. His taste is as sensitive, although less
delicate; and he distinguishes smells as well, although he does not apply the
aforementioned sensory faculties in the same way as grown up men. The first faculties
which are formed and perfected in human beings are the senses. They are, therefore, the
first faculties that ought to be cultivated; they are the only ones which are most neglected
or even completely ignored in children.
To exercise the senses is not only to make use of them, it is to learn the art of sound
judgement. It is to learn, so to speak, to sense; for we know how to touch, see, and hear
only as we have learned. There are purely natural and mechanical exercises which serve to
make the body robust without giving any occasion for the exercise of judgment.
Swimming, running, jumping, spinning a top, throwing stones, all that is quite good.
But have we only arms and legs? Have we not also eyes and ears; and are these organs
superfluous to the use of the former? Therefore, do not exercise only strength; exercise
all the senses which direct it. Get from each of them all that they can do. Then verify the
impressions of one sense by the other. Measure, count, weigh, compare. Use one's
strength only after having estimated resistance. Always arrange and rearrange it so that
the estimate of the effect precedes the use of the means. Interest the child in never
making insufficient or superfluous efforts. If you accustom him to foresee thus the effect
of all his movements and to set his mistakes right by experience, is it not clear that the
more he acts, the more judicious he will become?
Never show a child what he cannot see all by himself. Since mankind and nature of
human relations 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 what will be useful to
him when he is older, talk to him of what he knows and will be able to make use of now.
Moreover, as soon as he begins to reason let there be no comparison with other children,
no rivalry, no competition, not even in sports for instance, running races. I would rather
prefer that, he did not learn anything than have him learn it through jealousy or
self-conceit. Year by year I shall just note the progress he has made, I shall compare the
results of his previous years with those of the following year, I shall say, "You have grown
so much; that is the length of 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."
Your main objective should be to keep out of your student's way all idea of such social
relations as he cannot understand, but when the development of knowledge and reason
compels 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 men useful to one another. In human society man is the chief tool of man, and the
wisest man is he who best knows the use of this tool. What is the good of teaching
children an imaginary system, just the opposite of the established order of things, among
which they will have to live? First teach them wisdom, then show them the follies of
mankind.
But if you begin to teach the child the opinions of other people before you teach how to
judge of their worth, of one thing you may be sure, your pupil will adopt those opinions
whatever you may do, and you will not succeed in uprooting them. I am therefore
convinced that to make a child, that is a young man, judge rightly, you must form his own
judgment rather than teach him your own or somebody else’s.
Hard work and perseverance does compensate for lack of talent up to a certain point;
though one can get only so far, and no further. An honest and hard-working child's
perseverance and ambition are praiseworthy; he will always be respected for his industry
and steadfastness of purpose, but the results of his labour will always be third-rate. Who
would not have been deceived by his enthusiasm and taken it for genuine talent! There is
a world of difference between a liking and an aptitude. To be sure whether a child is a
prodigy or a genius, calls for more accurate observations than is generally suspected, for
the child generally displays his wishes not his capacity, and we judge by the former
instead of considering the latter. I wish some trustworthy person would give us a treatise
on the art of studying the child; all the more since this art is well worth studying, but
neither parents nor teachers have mastered its elements.
The apparent lack of reason which could facilitate learning may even become the cause
of children's ruin. But, it is not seen that lack of this very facility is the proof they learn
nothing. Their brain, smooth and polished, returns, like a mirror, the objects presented to
it. But nothing remains; nothing penetrates. The child retains the words; the ideas
themselves are reflected off from him. Those who hear him can understand them; only
the child does not understand them.
Although memory and reasoning are two essentially different faculties, nevertheless the
one truly develops only in conjunction with the other. Before the age of reason the child
receives not ideas but images; and the difference between the two is that images are only
absolute depictions of sensible objects, while ideas are notions of objects determined by
their mutual relationship and interdependence. An image can stand all alone in the mind
which represents it, but existence of every idea presupposes other related ideas. When
one imagines, one does nothing but see; when one conceives, one is comparing and
contrasting sensations. Our sensations are purely passive, while all our perceptions or
ideas are born out of an active principle of judgement, which we may call common-sense.
The way in which ideas are formed gives a character to the human mind. The mind which
derives its ideas from true and logical relationships is thorough; the mind which relies on
apparent relationships is superficial. He who sees relations as they are, has an exact mind;
he who fails to estimate them aright has an inaccurate mind; he who comes up with
imaginary relations, which have no real existence, is a madman; he who does not perceive
any relation at all is an imbecile. Intelligent men are distinguished from others by their
greater or less aptitude for the comparison of ideas and the discovery of relationships
between them.
Nature never deceives us; it is we who deceive ourselves. For Example: I see someone
giving an ice-cream to an eight-year-old child; he does not know what it is and puts the
spoon in his mouth. Struck by the cold he cries out, "Oh, it burns!" He feels a very keen
sensation, and the heat of the fire is the keenest sensation he knows, so he thinks that is
what he feels. Yet he is mistaken; cold hurts, but it does not burn; and these two
sensations are different, for persons with more experience do not confuse them. So it is
not the sensation that is wrong, but the judgment formed with regard to it.
Since all our errors arise in our judgment, it is clear, that had we no need for judgment, we
should have no need to learn; we should never be liable to mistakes, we should be happier
in our ignorance than we can be in our knowledge. Who can deny that a vast number of
things are known to the learned, which the unlearned will never know? Are the learned
any nearer to truth? Not so, the further they advance, the further they move away from
truth, for pride in their judgments increases faster than their progress in knowledge, so
that for every truth they acquire they draw a hundred mistaken conclusions. Everyone
knows that the learned societies of Europe are mere schools of falsehood, and there are
assuredly more mistaken notions in the American Academy of Sciences than in a whole
tribe of primitive American Indians.
The more we know, the more mistakes we make; therefore ignorance is the only way to
escape error. Form no judgments and you will never be mistaken. This is the teaching
both of nature and reason. We come into direct contact with very few things, and these
are very readily perceived; the rest we regard with profound indifference.
The best way of learning to reason correctly is that which tends to generalize our
experiences, or to enable us to dispense with them altogether without falling into error.
Hence it follows that we must learn to confirm the experiences of each sense by itself,
without recourse to any other, though we have been in the habit of verifying the
experience of one sense by that of another. Then each of our sensations will become an
idea, and this idea will always correspond to the truth. Do you see that as soon as the
mind has got any ideas at all, every judgment is a process of reasoning? So that as soon
as we compare one sensation with another, we are beginning to reason. The art of
judging and the art of reasoning are one and the same.
Compelled to learn for himself, a child uses his own reason not that of others, for there
must be no submission to authority if you also would have no submission to tradition.
Most of our mistakes are due to others more than ourselves. This continual exercise
should develop a vigour of mind like that acquired by the body through constant labour
and exercise. Among the few things a child knows, and knows thoroughly, this is the most
valuable, that there are many things he does not know now but may know some day,
many more that other men know but he will never know, and an infinite number which
nobody will ever know.
He has little power of generalisation, he has no skill in abstraction. He perceives that
certain qualities are common to certain things, without reasoning about these qualities
themselves. He is acquainted with the abstract idea of space by the help of his
geometrical figures; he is acquainted with the abstract idea of quantity by the help of his
algebraical symbols.
Our natural passions are few in number; they are the means to freedom, they tend
towards self-preservation. All those passions which enslave and destroy us have another
source; nature does not bestow them on us; we seize on them in her despite her warning.
The origin of our passions, the root and spring of all the rest, the only one which is born
with man, which never leaves him as long as he lives, is self-interest; this passion is
primitive, instinctive, it precedes all the rest, which are in a sense only modifications of it.
In this sense, if you like, they are all natural. But most of these modifications are the result
of environmental influences, without which they would never occur, and such
modifications, far from being advantageous to us, are clearly harmful.
Self-interest, which concerns itself only with ourselves, is content to satisfy our own
needs; but selfishness, which is always comparing the self with others, is never satisfied
and can never be; for this feeling, which prefers ourselves to others, requires that they
should prefer us to themselves, which is impossible. Thus the tender and gentle passions
spring from self-interest, while the hateful and angry passions spring from selfishness.
I can only find one satisfactory way of preserving the child's tenderness and innocence, to
surround him by those who respect and love him. Without this, all our efforts to keep him
in ignorance will fail sooner or later. A smile, a wink, a careless gesture tells him all we
sought to hide; it is enough to teach him to perceive that there is something the adults
want to hide from him. There is a certain directness of speech which is suitable and
pleasing to innocence; this is the right tone to adopt in order to turn off the child from
what we commonly consider dangerous curiosity. By speaking simply and directly 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 his realizing it, you make him uninterested to recall them.
"Where do little children come from?" This is an embarrassing question, which occurs very
naturally to children, one which foolishly or wisely answered may decide their health and
their morals for the rest of their life. The quickest way for a mother to escape from it
without deceiving her son is to scold him to be silent. But the mother rarely stops there,
she will say, "little boys should not be so curious." That is all very well so far as the mother
is concerned, but she may be sure that the little boy, annoyed by her scornful manner, will
not rest till he has found out the "married people's secret", which will very soon be the
case.
Let me tell you a very different answer which I heard given to the same question, one
which made all the more impression on me, coming, as it did, from a woman, modest in
speech and behaviour, but one who was able on such an occasion, for the welfare of her
child and for the cause of virtue, to cast aside the false fear of blame and the silly
enthusiasm of the foolish.
"Mamma," said the eager child, "where do little children come from?" "My child," replied
his mother without hesitation, "Women pass them with pains, sometimes at the expense
of their own lives." Let fools laugh and silly people be shocked; but let the wise inquire if it
is possible to find a wiser answer and one which would better serve its purpose. Yet you
see, there is no departure from truth, no need to deceive the child in order to teach him.
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FIRST MAXIM.--It is not in human nature to put ourselves in the place of those who are
happier than ourselves, but only in the place of those who can claim our empathy and
compassion.
SECOND MAXIM.--We never pity another's suffering unless we know we may suffer in
like manner ourselves.
Why do top bureaucrats have no pity on their ordinary people? Because they never
expect to be ordinary men. Why are the rich so hard on the poor? Because they have no
fear of becoming poor. Why does the successful man look down upon those who are
dejected and failed? Because a successful man believes he will never share company with
those who are dejected and failed. It needs no great learning to perceive that all the
prudence of mankind cannot make certain whether he will be alive or dead in the next
hour, or whether a month hence he will become rich or poor.
In order to explain it to a child, do not teach him this lesson like a cliche or in cold blood;
let him see and feel the calamities which overtake men; surprise and startle his
imagination, with the perils which lurk continually about a man's path; let him see the
pitfalls all about him, and when he hears you speak of them, let him cling more closely to
you for fear lest he should fall.
THIRD MAXIM.--The pity we feel for others is proportionate, not to the extent of
another's suffering, but to the feelings we attribute to the sufferers.
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Man's weakness and follies makes him sociable and our common sufferings draw our
hearts together with our fellow-men. Hence it follows that we are drawn towards our
fellow-men less by our feeling for their joys than for their sorrows; for in them we discern
more plainly a nature like our own, and an unwritten pledge of their affection for us. If our
common needs create a bond of mutual interest our common sufferings create a bond of
affection. The sight of a happy man arouses envy in others rather than love, we are ready
to blame him of laying claim to a right which is not his, of seeking happiness for himself
alone, and our selfishness suffers an additional dart of pain in the thought that this man
has no need of us.
Sympathy and Compassion are sweet, because, when we put ourselves in the place of
one who suffers, we are aware, nevertheless, of the pleasure of not suffering like him,
whereas envy is bitter, because the sight of a happy man, far from putting the envious in
his place, inspires him with resentment and 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.
To become sensitive and pitiful the child must know that he has fellow-creatures who
suffer just as he has suffered, who feel the pains as he has felt, and many other torments
which he can form some idea of, knowing that he is capable of feeling them himself.
Indeed, how can we let ourselves be stirred by compassion unless we go beyond
ourselves, and identify ourselves with the suffering creature, by leaving, so to speak, our
own nature and taking on his. We only suffer so far as we suppose he suffers; the
suffering is not ours but his. So no one becomes sensitive till his imagination is awakened
and begins to carry him outside of himself.
The rich man's sufferings does not come from his favorable position, but from himself
alone, when he abuses it. He is not to be pitied were he is indeed more miserable than the
poor, for his misery is of his own making, and he could be happy if he chose to. But the
sufferings of the poor man come from external events, from the hardships fate has
imposed upon him. No amount of habit can accustom him to the bodily ills of fatigue,
exhaustion, and hunger. Neither head nor heart can serve to free him from the sufferings
of his condition. To sum up, teach your child or student to love all men, even those who
fail to appreciate him; act in such way that he is not a member of any particular class or
sect, but looks at all men equally: speak in his hearing of the human race with tenderness,
affection, and even with sympathy, but never with contempt. Let him gently know that,
you are a man; and therefore also let him know, never to dishonour mankind.
There are other impressions less universal and of a later growth, impressions best suited
to more sensitive souls, such impressions as we receive from passions of the mind, moral
suffering, inward grief, of sadness and depression. There are men who can be touched by
nothing but groans, sobs and tears; the suppressed sobs of a heart labouring under
sorrow would never win a sigh from him; the sight of a downcast visage, a pale and
gloomy countenance, eyes which can weep no longer, would never draw a tear from
them.
We are too apt to judge another's happiness by mere appearances; we suppose that it is
to be found in the most unlikely of places, we seek for it, where it cannot possibly be;
noisy cheerfulness and a festive spirit is a very doubtful indication of its presence. An
apparently cheerful man is often a miserable one who is trying to deceive others and
distract himself.
A truly happy man says little and laughs little; he hugs his happiness, so to speak, to his
heart. Noisy games, violent delight, conceal the disappointment of shallow and empty
pleasures. The unrest of passion causes nervous curiosity and fickleness; and the
emptiness of noisy pleasures causes tiredness. But sorrow is the friend of real joy; tears
and pity attend our sweetest enjoyment, and therefore great and overwhelming joys call
for tears rather than laughter. We discover that the most pleasant habits of mind consists
in a moderation of spirit which leaves little scope for either likes or dislikes.
He must be softened, not hardened, by the sight of human misery. When we have often
seen a sight, it ceases to impress us, what is routinely before our eyes no longer appeals
to the imagination, and it is only through the imagination that we can feel the sorrows of
others; this is why priests and doctors who are always beholding death and suffering
become so hardened. Let your student, therefore, know something of the lot of man and
the suffering of his fellow creatures, but let him not see them too often. A single thing,
carefully selected and shown at the right time, will fill him with pity and set him thinking
for a month. His opinion about anything depends not so much on what he sees, but on
how he reacts to what he sees; and his lasting impression of any matter depends less on
the matter itself than on the point of view from which he regards it.
Let him know that man is by nature good, let him feel it, let him judge his neighbour by
himself; but let him see how men are depraved and perverted by society; let him find the
source of all their vices in their own preconceived opinions; let him be disposed to respect
the individual, but to despise the masses; let him see that all men wear almost the same
mask, but let him also know that some faces are fairer than the mask that conceals them.
Also let him know that, while studying history, in order to know men you must behold
their actions. In society we hear them talk; they show their words and hide their deeds;
but in history the veil is drawn aside, and they are judged by their deeds. Their sayings
even help us to understand them; for comparing what they say and what they do, we see
not only what they are, but, how they would appear to themselves and others; the more
they disguise themselves, all the more thoroughly they stand revealed.
What then are the ultimate requirements for the proper study of men? A great wish to
know men, great impartiality of judgment, a heart sufficiently sensitive to understand
every human passion, and calm enough to be free from passion.
Great men are under no illusion with regard to their own 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 of their superiority over ordinary men, than ashamed by the
awareness of their own weakness, and among the good things they do possess, they are
too wise to pride themselves on a gift which is not to their credit. Provided a man is not
insane, he can be cured of any folly except vanity; there is no cure for it but experience, if
indeed there is any cure for it at all; and therefore, vanity, when it first appears we can at
least prevent its further growth.
How does one inculcate respect for parents and teachers in a child? Choose the best and
most natural means; be frank and straightforward like the child himself; warn him of the
dangers to which he is exposed, point them out plainly and sensibly, without
exaggeration, without temper, without pedantic display, and above all without giving your
opinions in the form of orders, unless and until they have become such, and this
imperious tone is absolutely necessary. Should he still be obstinate as he often will be,
leave him free to follow his own choice, follow him, copy his example, and that cheerfully
and frankly; if possible fling yourself into things, amuse yourself as much as he does.
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 rebellion. We learn nothing from a lesson
that we hate. I know nothing more foolish than the phrase, "Son, I told you so." The best
way to make a child remember what you told him is to seem to have forgotten it. To go
further than this, and when you find him ashamed of having refused to believe you,
gently cast away the shame with kindly words. He will indeed hold you dear when he sees
how you forget yourself on his account, and how you console him instead of reproaching
him. But if you increase his annoyance by your reproaches he will hate you, and will make
it a rule never to pay attention to you, as if to show you that he does not agree with you
as to the value of your opinion.
I am never weary of repeating: let all the lessons to young people take the form of doing
rather than talking; let them learn nothing from books which they can learn from
experience. How absurd to attempt to give them practice in speaking when they have
nothing to say, to expect to make them feel, at their school desks, the vigour of the
language of passion and all the force of the arts of persuasion when they have nothing
and nobody to persuade! All the rules of rhetoric are mere waste of words to those, who
do not know how to use them for their own purposes.
What is courtesy and politeness? True politeness consists in showing our genuine
affection and goodwill towards men. The worst effect of artificial or fake politeness is that
it teaches us how to do away with the virtues it imitates. If our education has taught and
shown us kindness and humility, we shall be polite, otherwise we shall have no need of
politeness.
Boys want movement and noise, drums, tops, toy-carts; girls prefer things which appeal
to the eye, and can be used for dressing-up - mirrors, jewellery, finery, and specially dolls.
The doll is the girl's special plaything; this shows her instinctive bent towards what would
eventually be her life's work. The art of pleasing finds its physical basis in personal
adornment, and this physical side of the art is the only one which the child can cultivate.
Here is a little girl busy all day with her doll; she is always changing its clothes, dressing
and undressing it, trying new combinations of trimmings well or ill matched; her fingers
are clumsy, her taste is crude, but there is no mistaking her bent of mind; in this endless
occupation time flies by unattended, the hours slip away unnoticed, even meals are
forgotten. She is more eager for adornment than for food. "But she is dressing her doll,
not herself," you will say. Just so; she sees her doll, she cannot see herself; she cannot do
anything for herself, she has neither the training, nor the talent, nor the strength; as yet
she herself is nothing, she is engrossed in her doll and all her ornaments are devoted to it.
This will not always be so; in due time she will be her own doll.
Girls are usually more dutiful and obedient than boys, and they should be subjected to
more authority, but that is no reason why they should be required to do things in which
they can see neither rhyme nor reason. The mother's art consists in showing the use of
everything they are set to do, and this is all the easier as the girl's intelligence is more
mature than the boys.
Also, little girls soon learn to babble very nicely, and that's why men enjoy listening to
them even before the child himself can understand them. Women have ready tongues;
they talk earlier, more easily, and more pleasantly than men. They are also said to talk
more; this may be true, but I am prepared to reckon it to their credit; eyes and mouth are
equally busy and for the same cause. A man says what he knows, a woman says what will
please others; the one needs knowledge, the other good taste; utility should be the man's
object; the woman speaks to give pleasure.
A Woman requires dutifulness and obedience all her life, for she will always be under
subjection to a man, or to a man's judgment, and she will never be free to set her own
opinion above his. What is most wanted in a woman is gentleness; formed to obey a
creature so imperfect as man, a creature often vicious and always faulty, she should early
learn to submit to injustice and to suffer the wrongs inflicted on her by her husband
without complaint; she must be gentle for her own sake, not for his husband. Bitterness
and obstinacy only multiply the sufferings of the wife and the misdeeds of the husband;
also the man feels that these are not her weapons to be used against him. But, a man,
unless he is a perfect monster, will sooner or later yield to his wife's gentleness, and the
victory will be hers.
Rousseau expresses to the reader, a general sentiment that, he hates all books-including,
especially, the book of books, the books of religion and morality, particularly the Bible.
Books act as intermediaries between men and external world; they attach men to the
opinions of others rather than forcing them to understand on their own rather than
leaving them in ignorance. They excite the imagination, increasing thereby the desires,
the hopes, and the fears beyond the realm of the necessity. All of Emile's early rearing is
an elaborate attempt to avoid the emergence of the imagination.
Too much reading only produces a pretentious ignoramus. There was never so much
reading in any age as the present, and never was there less learning. Those who think it is
enough to read our books are mistaken; there is more to be learnt from the conversation
with authors of those books than the books themselves; and it is not even from the
authors that we learn most; It is the animated spirit of an active social life which develops
a thinking mind, and carries the eye as far as it can reach. The misuse of books is the
death of sound learning. People think they know what they have read, and take no pains
to investigate any further.
There are plenty of people who learn no more from their travels than from their books,
because they do not know how to think; because while reading their mind is at least
under the guidance of the author, and in their travels they do not know how to see for
themselves. Others learn nothing, because they have no desire to learn. Their object is so
entirely different, that this never occurs to them; it is very unlikely that you will see clearly
what you take no trouble to look for. The ancients travelled little, read little, and wrote few
books; yet we see in those books that remain to us, that they observed each other much
more thoroughly than we observe in our contemporaries.