Émile; Or, Concerning Education; Extracts — A Closer Reading

What was most serious and most suggestive in it was not, perhaps, seized upon; but the "craze" of which it was the object had, notwithstanding, good results. Mothers were won over, and resolved to nurse their own infants; great lords began to learn handicrafts, like Rousseau's imaginary pupil; physical exercises came into fashion; the spirit of innovation was forcing itself a way.

It was not among ourselves, however, that the theories of Rousseau were most eagerly experimented upon; it was among foreigners, in Germany, in Switzerland, that they found more resolute partisans, and a field more ready to receive them.

Three men above all the rest are noted for having popularized the pedagogic method of Rousseau, and for having been inspired in their labors by "Emile." These were Basedow, Pestalozzi, and Froebel.

Basedow, a German theologian, had devoted himself entirely to dogmatic controversy, until the reading of "Emile" had the effect of enlarging his mental horizon, and of revealing to him his true vocation. He wrote important books to show how Rousseau's method could be applied in different departments of instruction, and founded at Dessau, in 1774, an institution to bring that method within the domain of experience.

This institution, to which he gave the name of "Philanthropinum," was secular in the true sense of the word; and at that time this was in itself a novelty. It was open to pupils of every belief and every nationality, and proposed to render study easy, pleasant, and expeditious to them, by following the directions of nature itself. In the first rank of his disciples may be placed Campe, who succeeded him in the management of the Philanthropinum.

Pestalozzi of Zuerich, one of the foremost educators of modern times, also found his whole life transformed by the reading of "Emile," which awoke in him the genius of a reformer. He himself also, in 1775, founded a school, in order to put in practice there his progressive and professional method of teaching, which was a fruitful development of seeds sown by Rousseau in his book. Pestalozzi left numerous writings,--romances, treatises, reviews,--all having for sole object the popularization of his ideas and processes of education. The most distinguished among his disciples and continuators is Froebel, the founder of those primary schools or asylums known by the name of "kindergartens," and the author of highly esteemed pedagogic works.

These various attempts, these new and ingenious processes which, step by step, have made their way among us, and are beginning to make their workings felt, even in institutions most stoutly opposed to progress, are all traceable to Rousseau's "Emile."

It is therefore not too much for Frenchmen, for teachers, for parents, for every one in our country who is interested in what concerns teaching, to go back to the source of so great a movement.

It is true that "Emile" contains pages that have outlived their day, many odd precepts, many false ideas, many disputable and destructive theories; but at the same time we find in it so many sagacious observations, such upright counsels, suitable even to modern times, so lofty an ideal, that, in spite of everything, we cannot read and study it without profit. There is no one who does not know the book by name and by reputation; but how many parents, and even teachers, have never read it!

This is because a large part of the book is no longer in accordance with the actual condition of things; because its very plan, its fundamental idea, are outside of the truth. We are obliged to exercise judgment, to make selections. Some of it must be taken, some left untouched. This is what we have done in the present edition.

We have not, indeed, the presumption to correct Rousseau, or to substitute an expurgated "Emile" for the authentic "Emile." We have simply wished to draw the attention of the teachers of childhood to those pages of this book which have least grown old, which can still be of service, can hasten the downfall of the old systems, can emphasize, by their energy and beauty of language, methods already inaugurated and reforms already undertaken. These methods and reforms cannot be too often recommended and set in a clear light. We have desired to call to the rescue this powerful and impassioned writer, who brings to bear upon every subject he approaches the magical attractiveness of his style.

There is absolutely nothing practicable in his system. It consists in isolating a child from the rest of the world; in creating expressly for him a tutor, who is a phoenix among his kind; in depriving him of father, mother, brothers, and sisters, his companions in study; in surrounding him with a perpetual charlatanism, under the pretext of following nature; and in showing him only through the veil of a factitious atmosphere the society in which he is to live. And, nevertheless, at each step it is sound reason by which we are met; by an astonishing paradox, this whimsicality is full of good sense; this dream overflows with realities; this improbable and chimerical romance contains the substance and the marrow of a rational and truly modern treatise on pedagogy. Sometimes we must read between the lines, add what experience has taught us since that day, transpose into an atmosphere of open democracy these pages, written under the old order of things, but even then quivering with the new world which they were bringing to light, and for which they prepared the way.

Reading "Emile" in the light of modern prejudices, we can see in it more than the author wittingly put into it; but not more than logic and the instinct of genius set down there.

To unfold the powers of children in due proportion to their age; not to transcend their ability; to arouse in them the sense of the observer and of the pioneer; to make them discoverers rather than imitators; to teach them accountability to themselves and not slavish dependence upon the words of others; to address ourselves more to the will than to custom, to the reason rather than to the memory; to substitute for verbal recitations lessons about things; to lead to theory by way of art; to assign to physical movements and exercises a prominent place, from the earliest hours of life up to perfect maturity; such are the principles scattered broadcast in this book, and forming a happy counterpoise to the oddities of which Rousseau was perhaps most proud.

He takes the child in its cradle, almost before its birth; he desires that mothers should fulfil the sacred duty of nursing them at the breast. If there must be a nurse, he knows how to choose her, how she ought to be treated, how she should be fed. He watches over the movements of the new-born child, over its first playthings. All these counsels bear the stamp of good sense and of experience; or, rather, they result from a power of divination singular enough in a man who was not willing to take care of his own children. In this way, day by day, he follows up the physical and moral development of the little being, all whose ideas and feelings he analyzes, whom he guides with wisdom and with tact throughout the mazes of a life made up of convention and artifice.

We have carefully avoided suppressing the fictions of the gardener and of the mountebank; because they are characteristic of his manner, and because, after all, these pre-arranged scenes which, as they stand, are anything in the world rather than real teaching, contain, nevertheless, right notions, and opinions which may suggest to intelligent teachers processes in prudent education. Such teachers will not copy the form; they will not imitate the awkward clap-trap; but, yielding to the inspiration of the dominant idea, they will, in a way more in accordance with nature, manage to thrill with life the teaching of facts, and will aid the mind in giving birth to its ideas. This is the old method of Socrates, the eternal method of reason, the only method which really educates.

We have brought this volume to an end with the third book of "Emile." The fourth and fifth books which follow are not within the domain of pedagogy. They contain admirable pages, which ought to be read; which occupy one of the foremost places in our literature; which deal with philosophy, with ethics, with theology; but they concern themselves with the manner of directing young men and women, and no longer with childhood. The author conducts his Emile even as far as to his betrothal; he devotes an entire book to the betrothed herself, Sophie, and closes his volume only after he has united them in marriage.

We will not go so far. We will leave Emile upon the confines of youth, at the time when he escapes from school, and when he is about beginning to feel that he is a man. At this difficult and critical period the teacher no longer suffices. Then, above all things, is needed all the influence of the family; the father's example, the mother's clear-sighted tenderness, worthy friendships, an environment of meritorious people, of upright minds animated by lofty ideas, who attract within their orbit this ardent and inquisitive being, eager for novelty, for action, and for independence.

Artifices and stratagems are then no longer good for anything; they are very soon laid open to the light. All that can be required of a teacher is that he shall have furnished his pupils with a sound and strong education, drawn from the sources of reason, experience, and nature; that he shall have prepared them to learn to form judgments, to make use of their faculties, to enter valiantly upon study and upon life. It seems to us that the pages of Rousseau here published may be a useful guide in the pursuit of such a result.

The first book, after some general remarks upon education, treats especially of early infancy; of the first years of life; of the care to be bestowed upon very young children; of the nursing of them, of the laws of health.

He makes education begin at birth; expresses himself on the subject of the habits to be given or to be avoided; discusses the use and meaning of tears, outcries, gestures, also the language that should be used with young children, so that, from their tenderest years, the inculcating of false ideas and the giving a wrong bent of mind may be avoided.

The Object of Education.

Coming from the hand of the Author of all things, everything is good; in the hands of man, everything degenerates. Man obliges one soil to nourish the productions of another, one tree to bear the fruits of another; he mingles and confounds climates, elements, seasons; he mutilates his dog, his horse, his slave. He overturns everything, disfigures everything; he loves deformity, monsters; he desires that nothing should be as nature made it, not even man himself. To please him, man must be broken in like a horse; man must be adapted to man's own fashion, like a tree in his garden.[1]

Were it not for all this, matters would be still worse. No one wishes to be a half-developed being; and in the present condition of things, a man left to himself among others from his birth would be the most deformed among them all. Prejudices, authority, necessities, example, all the social institutions in which we are submerged, would stifle nature in him, and would put nothing in its place. In such a man nature would be like a shrub sprung up by chance in the midst of a highway, and jostled from all sides, bent in every direction, by the passers-by.

Plants are improved by cultivation, and men by education. If man were born large and strong, his size and strength would be useless to him until he had learned to use them. They would be prejudicial to him, by preventing others from thinking of assisting him; and left to himself he would die of wretchedness before he had known his own necessities. We pity the state of infancy; we do not perceive that the human race would have perished if man had not begun by being a child.

We are born weak, we need strength; we are born destitute of all things, we need assistance; we are born stupid, we need judgment. All that we have not at our birth, and that we need when grown up, is given us by education.

This education comes to us from nature itself, or from other men, or from circumstances. The internal development of our faculties and of our organs is the education nature gives us; the use we are taught to make of this development is the education we get from other men; and what we learn, by our own experience, about things that interest as, is the education of circumstances.

Each of us is therefore formed by three kinds of teachers. The pupil in whom their different lessons contradict one another is badly educated, and will never be in harmony with himself; the one in whom they all touch upon the same points and tend toward the same object advances toward that goal only, and lives accordingly. He alone is well educated.

Now of these three different educations, that of nature does not depend upon us; that of circumstances depends upon us only in certain respects; that of men is the only one of which we are really masters, and that solely because we think we are. For who can hope to direct entirely the speech and conduct of all who surround a child?

As soon, therefore, as education becomes an art, its success is almost impossible, since the agreement of circumstances necessary to this success is independent of personal effort. All that the utmost care can do is to approach more or less nearly our object; but, for attaining it, special good fortune is needed.

What is this object? That of nature itself, as has just been proved. Since the agreement of the three educations is necessary to their perfection, it is toward the one for which we ourselves can do nothing that we must direct both the others. But perhaps this word "nature" has too vague a meaning; we must here try to define it.

In the natural order of things, all men being equal, the vocation common to all is the state of manhood; and whoever is well trained for that, cannot fulfil badly any vocation which depends upon it. Whether my pupil be destined for the army, the church, or the bar, matters little to me. Before he can think of adopting the vocation of his parents, nature calls upon him to be a man. How to live is the business I wish to teach him. On leaving my hands he will not, I admit, be a magistrate, a soldier, or a priest; first of all he will be a man. All that a man ought to be he can be, at need, as well as any one else can. Fortune will in vain alter his position, for he will always occupy his own.

Our real study is that of the state of man. He among us who best knows how to bear the good and evil fortunes of this life is, in my opinion, the best educated; whence it follows that true education consists less in precept than in practice. We begin to instruct ourselves when we begin to live; our education commences with the commencement of our life; our first teacher is our nurse. For this reason the word "education" had among the ancients another meaning which we no longer attach to it; it signified nutriment.

We must then take a broader view of things, and consider in our pupil man in the abstract, man exposed to all the accidents of human life. If man were born attached to the soil of a country, if the same season continued throughout the year, if every one held his fortune by such a tenure that he could never change it, the established customs of to-day would be in certain respects good. The child educated for his position, and never leaving it, could not be exposed to the inconveniences of another.

But seeing that human affairs are changeable, seeing the restless and disturbing spirit of this century, which overturns everything once in a generation, can a more senseless method be imagined than to educate a child as if he were never to leave his room, as if he were obliged to be constantly surrounded by his servants? If the poor creature takes but one step on the earth, if he comes down so much as one stair, he is ruined. This is not teaching him to endure pain; it is training him to feel it more keenly.

We think only of preserving the child: this is not enough. We ought to teach him to preserve himself when he is a man; to bear the blows of fate; to brave both wealth and wretchedness; to live, if need be, among the snows of Iceland or upon the burning rock of Malta. In vain you take precautions against his dying,--he must die after all; and if his death be not indeed the result of those very precautions, they are none the less mistaken. It is less important to keep him from dying than it is to teach him how to live. To live is not merely to breathe, it is to act. It is to make use of our organs, of our senses, of our faculties, of all the powers which bear witness to us of our own existence. He who has lived most is not he who has numbered the most years, but he who has been most truly conscious of what life is. A man may have himself buried at the age of a hundred years, who died from the hour of his birth. He would have gained something by going to his grave in youth, if up to that time he had only lived.

The new-born child needs to stretch and to move his limbs so as to draw them out of the torpor in which, rolled into a ball, they have so long remained. We do stretch his limbs, it is true, but we prevent him from moving them. We even constrain his head into a baby's cap. It seems as if we were afraid he might appear to be alive. The inaction, the constraint in which we keep his limbs, cannot fail to interfere with the circulation of the blood and of the secretions, to prevent the child from growing strong and sturdy, and to change his constitution. In regions where these extravagant precautions are not taken, the men are all large, strong, and well proportioned. Countries in which children are swaddled swarm with hunchbacks, with cripples, with persons crook-kneed, stunted, rickety, deformed in all kinds of ways. For fear that the bodies of children may be deformed by free movements, we hasten to deform them by putting them into a press. Of our own accord we cripple them to prevent their laming themselves.

Must not such a cruel constraint have an influence upon their temper as well as upon their constitution? Their first feeling is a feeling of constraint and of suffering. To all their necessary movements they find only obstacles. More unfortunate than chained criminals, they make fruitless efforts, they fret themselves, they cry. Do you tell me that the first sounds they make are cries? I can well believe it; you thwart them from the time they are born. The first gifts they receive from you are chains, the first treatment they undergo is torment. Having nothing free but the voice, why should they not use it in complaints? They cry on account of the suffering you cause them; if you were pinioned in the same way, your own cries would be louder.