Emile by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (most read book in the world TXT) 📕

consolation may itself be a lesson to him, and all the more because he does not suspect it. When you tell him, for example, that many other people have made the same mistakes, this is not what he was expecting; you are administering correction under the guise of pity; for when one thinks oneself better than other people it is a very mortifying excuse to console oneself by their example; it means that we must realise that the most we can say is that they are no better than we.

The time of faults is the time for fables. When we blame the guilty under the cover of a story we instruct without offending him; and he then understands that the story is not untrue by means of the truth he finds in its application to himself. The child who has never been deceived by flattery understands nothing of the fable I recently examined; but the rash youth who has just become the dupe of a flatterer perceives only too readily that the crow was a fool.

Thus he acquires a maxim from the fact, and the experience he would soon have forgotten is engraved on his mind by means of the fable.

There is no knowledge of morals which cannot be acquired through our own experience or that of others. When there is danger, instead of letting him try the experiment himself, we have recourse to history.

When the risk is comparatively slight, it is just as well that the youth should be exposed to it; then by means of the apologue the special cases with which the young man is now acquainted are transformed into maxims.

It is not, however, my intention that these maxims should be explained, nor even formulated. Nothing is so foolish and unwise as the moral at the end of most of the fables; as if the moral was not, or ought not to be so clear in the fable itself that the reader cannot fail to perceive it. Why then add the moral at the end, and go deprive him of the pleasure of discovering it for himself.

The art of teaching consists in making the pupil wish to learn.

But if the pupil is to wish to learn, his mind must not remain in such a passive state with regard to what you tell him that there is really nothing for him to do but listen to you. The master’s vanity must always give way to the scholars; he must be able to say, I understand, I see it, I am getting at it, I am learning something. One of the things which makes the Pantaloon in the Italian comedies so wearisome is the pains taken by him to explain to the audience the platitudes they understand only too well already.

We must always be intelligible, but we need not say all there is to be said. If you talk much you will say little, for at last no one will listen to you. What is the sense of the four lines at the end of La Fontaine’s fable of the frog who puffed herself up. Is he afraid we should not understand it? Does this great painter need to write the names beneath the things he has painted? His morals, far from generalising, restrict the lesson to some extent to the examples given, and prevent our applying them to others. Before I put the fables of this inimitable author into the hands of a youth, I should like to cut out all the conclusions with which he strives to explain what he has just said so clearly and pleasantly. If your pupil does not understand the fable without the explanation, he will not understand it with it.

Moreover, the fables would require to be arranged in a more didactic order, one more in agreement with the feelings and knowledge of the young adolescent. Can you imagine anything so foolish as to follow the mere numerical order of the book without regard to our requirements or our opportunities. First the grasshopper, then the crow, then the frog, then the two mules, etc. I am sick of these two mules; I remember seeing a child who was being educated for finance; they never let him alone, but were always insisting on the profession he was to follow; they made him read this fable, learn it, say it, repeat it again and again without finding in it the slightest argument against his future calling. Not only have I never found children make any real use of the fables they learn, but I have never found anybody who took the trouble to see that they made such a use of them. The study claims to be instruction in morals; but the real aim of mother and child is nothing but to set a whole party watching the child while he recites his fables; when he is too old to recite them and old enough to make use of them, they are altogether forgotten. Only men, I repeat, can learn from fables, and Emile is now old enough to begin.

I do not mean to tell you everything, so I only indicate the paths which diverge from the right way, so that you may know how to avoid them. If you follow the road I have marked out for you, I think your pupil will buy his knowledge of mankind and his knowledge of himself in the cheapest market; you will enable him to behold the tricks of fortune without envying the lot of her favourites, and to be content with himself without thinking himself better than others. You have begun by making him an actor that he may learn to be one of the audience; you must continue your task, for from the theatre things are what they seem, from the stage they seem what they are. For the general effect we must get a distant view, for the details we must observe more closely. But how can a young man take part in the business of life? What right has he to be initiated into its dark secrets? His interests are confined within the limits of his own pleasures, he has no power over others, it is much the same as if he had no power at all. Man is the cheapest commodity on the market, and among all our important rights of property, the rights of the individual are always considered last of all.

When I see the studies of young men at the period of their greatest activity confined to purely speculative matters, while later on they are suddenly plunged, without any sort of experience, into the world of men and affairs, it strikes me as contrary alike to reason and to nature, and I cease to be surprised that so few men know what to do. How strange a choice to teach us so many useless things, while the art of doing is never touched upon! They profess to fit us for society, and we are taught as if each of us were to live a life of contemplation in a solitary cell, or to discuss theories with persons whom they did not concern. You think you are teaching your scholars how to live, and you teach them certain bodily contortions and certain forms of words without meaning.

I, too, have taught Emile how to live; for I have taught him to enjoy his own society and, more than that, to earn his own bread.

But this is not enough. To live in the world he must know how to get on with other people, he must know what forces move them, he must calculate the action and reaction of self-interest in civil society, he must estimate the results so accurately that he will rarely fail in his undertakings, or he will at least have tried in the best possible way. The law does not allow young people to manage their own affairs nor to dispose of their own property; but what would be the use of these precautions if they never gained any experience until they were of age. They would have gained nothing by the delay, and would have no more experience at five-and-twenty than at fifteen. No doubt we must take precautions, so that a youth, blinded by ignorance or misled by passion, may not hurt himself; but at any age there are opportunities when deeds of kindness and of care for the weak may be performed under the direction of a wise man, on behalf of the unfortunate who need help.

Mothers and nurses grow fond of children because of the care they lavish on them; the practice of social virtues touches the very heart with the love of humanity; by doing good we become good; and I know no surer way to this end. Keep your pupil busy with the good deeds that are within his power, let the cause of the poor be his own, let him help them not merely with his money, but with his service; let him work for them, protect them, let his person and his time be at their disposal; let him be their agent; he will never all his life long have a more honourable office. How many of the oppressed, who have never got a hearing, will obtain justice when he demands it for them with that courage and firmness which the practice of virtue inspires; when he makes his way into the presence of the rich and great, when he goes, if need be, to the footstool of the king himself, to plead the cause of the wretched, the cause of those who find all doors closed to them by their poverty, those who are so afraid of being punished for their misfortunes that they do not dare to complain?

But shall we make of Emile a knight-errant, a redresser of wrongs, a paladin? Shall he thrust himself into public life, play the sage and the defender of the laws before the great, before the magistrates, before the king? Shall he lay petitions before the judges and plead in the law courts? That I cannot say. The nature of things is not changed by terms of mockery and scorn. He will do all that he knows to be useful and good. He will do nothing more, and he knows that nothing is useful and good for him which is unbefitting his age.

He knows that his first duty is to himself; that young men should distrust themselves; that they should act circumspectly; that they should show respect to those older than themselves, reticence and discretion in talking without cause, modesty in things indifferent, but courage in well doing, and boldness to speak the truth. Such were those illustrious Romans who, having been admitted into public life, spent their days in bringing criminals to justice and in protecting the innocent, without any motives beyond those of learning, and of the furtherance of justice and of the protection of right conduct.

Emile is not fond of noise or quarrelling, not only among men, but among animals. [Footnote: “But what will he do if any one seeks a quarrel with him?” My answer is that no one will ever quarrel with him, he will never lend himself to such a thing. But, indeed, you continue, who can be safe from a blow, or an insult from a bully, a drunkard, a bravo, who for the joy of killing his man begins by dishonouring him? That is another matter. The life and honour of the citizens should not be at the mercy of a bully, a drunkard, or a bravo, and one can no more insure oneself against such an accident than against a falling tile. A blow given, or a lie in the teeth, if he submit to them, have social consequences which no wisdom can prevent and no tribunal can avenge. The weakness of the laws, therefore, so