Emile

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EMILE

By Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Translated by Barbara Foxley

Author's Preface

This collection of scattered thoughts and observations has little
order or continuity; it was begun to give pleasure to a good mother
who thinks for herself. My first idea was to write a tract a few
pages long, but I was carried away by my subject, and before I knew
what I was doing my tract had become a kind of book, too large indeed
for the matter contained in it, but too small for the subject of
which it treats. For a long time I hesitated whether to publish
it or not, and I have often felt, when at work upon it, that it is
one thing to publish a few pamphlets and another to write a book.
After vain attempts to improve it, I have decided that it is my
duty to publish it as it stands. I consider that public attention
requires to be directed to this subject, and even if my own ideas
are mistaken, my time will not have been wasted if I stir up others
to form right ideas. A solitary who casts his writings before the
public without any one to advertise them, without any party ready
to defend them, one who does not even know what is thought and said
about those writings, is at least free from one anxiety--if he is
mistaken, no one will take his errors for gospel.

I shall say very little about the value of a good education, nor
shall I stop to prove that the customary method of education is bad;
this has been done again and again, and I do not wish to fill my
book with things which everyone knows. I will merely state that, go
as far back as you will, you will find a continual outcry against
the established method, but no attempt to suggest a better. The
literature and science of our day tend rather to destroy than to
build up. We find fault after the manner of a master; to suggest,
we must adopt another style, a style less in accordance with the
pride of the philosopher. In spite of all those books, whose only
aim, so they say, is public utility, the most useful of all arts,
the art of training men, is still neglected. Even after Locke's
book was written the subject remained almost untouched, and I fear
that my book will leave it pretty much as it found it.

We know nothing of childhood; and with our mistaken notions the
further we advance the further we go astray. The wisest writers
devote themselves to what a man ought to know, without asking what
a child is capable of learning. They are always looking for the
man in the child, without considering what he is before he becomes
a man. It is to this study that I have chiefly devoted myself,
so that if my method is fanciful and unsound, my observations may
still be of service. I may be greatly mistaken as to what ought to
be done, but I think I have clearly perceived the material which
is to be worked upon. Begin thus by making a more careful study of
your scholars, for it is clear that you know nothing about them;
yet if you read this book with that end in view, I think you will
find that it is not entirely useless.

With regard to what will be called the systematic portion of the
book, which is nothing more than the course of nature, it is here
that the reader will probably go wrong, and no doubt I shall be
attacked on this side, and perhaps my critics may be right. You
will tell me, "This is not so much a treatise on education as the
visions of a dreamer with regard to education." What can I do? I have
not written about other people's ideas of education, but about my
own. My thoughts are not those of others; this reproach has been
brought against me again and again. But is it within my power
to furnish myself with other eyes, or to adopt other ideas? It is
within my power to refuse to be wedded to my own opinions and to
refuse to think myself wiser than others. I cannot change my mind;
I can distrust myself. This is all I can do, and this I have done.
If I sometimes adopt a confident tone, it is not to impress the
reader, it is to make my meaning plain to him. Why should I profess
to suggest as doubtful that which is not a matter of doubt to
myself? I say just what I think.

When I freely express my opinion, I have so little idea of claiming
authority that I always give my reasons, so that you may weigh
and judge them for yourselves; but though I would not obstinately
defend my ideas, I think it my duty to put them forward; for the
principles with regard to which I differ from other writers are
not matters of indifference; we must know whether they are true or
false, for on them depends the happiness or the misery of mankind.
People are always telling me to make PRACTICABLE suggestions. You
might as well tell me to suggest what people are doing already,
or at least to suggest improvements which may be incorporated with
the wrong methods at present in use. There are matters with regard
to which such a suggestion is far more chimerical than my own,
for in such a connection the good is corrupted and the bad is none
the better for it. I would rather follow exactly the established
method than adopt a better method by halves. There would be fewer
contradictions in the man; he cannot aim at one and the same time
at two different objects. Fathers and mothers, what you desire that
you can do. May I count on your goodwill?

There are two things to be considered with regard to any scheme.
In the first place, "Is it good in itself" In the second, "Can it
be easily put into practice?"

With regard to the first of these it is enough that the scheme
should be intelligible and feasible in itself, that what is good
in it should be adapted to the nature of things, in this case, for
example, that the proposed method of education should be suitable
to man and adapted to the human heart.

The second consideration depends upon certain given conditions in
particular cases; these conditions are accidental and therefore
variable; they may vary indefinitely. Thus one kind of education
would be possible in Switzerland and not in France; another would be
adapted to the middle classes but not to the nobility. The scheme
can be carried out, with more or less success, according to a
multitude of circumstances, and its results can only be determined
by its special application to one country or another, to this class
or that. Now all these particular applications are not essential
to my subject, and they form no part of my scheme. It is enough
for me that, wherever men are born into the world, my suggestions
with regard to them may be carried out, and when you have made them
what I would have them be, you have done what is best for them and
best for other people. If I fail to fulfil this promise, no doubt
I am to blame; but if I fulfil my promise, it is your own fault if
you ask anything more of me, for I have promised you nothing more.

BOOK I

God makes all things good; man meddles with them and they become
evil. He forces one soil to yield the products of another, one tree
to bear another's fruit. He confuses and confounds time, place,
and natural conditions. He mutilates his dog, his horse, and his
slave. He destroys and defaces all things; he loves all that is
deformed and monstrous; he will have nothing as nature made it,
not even man himself, who must learn his paces like a saddle-horse,
and be shaped to his master's taste like the trees in his garden.
Yet things would be worse without this education, and mankind cannot
be made by halves. Under existing conditions a man left to himself
from birth would be more of a monster than the rest. Prejudice,
authority, necessity, example, all the social conditions into which
we are plunged, would stifle nature in him and put nothing in her
place. She would be like a sapling chance sown in the midst of the
highway, bent hither and thither and soon crushed by the passers-by.

Tender, anxious mother, [Footnote: The earliest education is
most important and it undoubtedly is woman's work. If the author
of nature had meant to assign it to men he would have given them
milk to feed the child. Address your treatises on education to the
women, for not only are they able to watch over it more closely than
men, not only is their influence always predominant in education,
its success concerns them more nearly, for most widows are at the
mercy of their children, who show them very plainly whether their
education was good or bad. The laws, always more concerned about
property than about people, since their object is not virtue but
peace, the laws give too little authority to the mother. Yet her
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 devoted herself to his care, such a monstrous wretch should
be smothered at once as unworthy to live. You say mothers spoil
their children, and no doubt that is wrong, but it is worse to
deprave them as you do. The mother wants her child to be happy
now. She is right, and if her method is wrong, she must be taught
a better. Ambition, avarice, tyranny, the mistaken foresight of fathers,
their neglect, their harshness, are a hundredfold more harmful to
the child than the blind affection of the mother. Moreover, I must
explain what I mean by a mother and that explanation follows.] I
appeal to you. You can remove this young tree from the highway and
shield it from the crushing force of social conventions. Tend and
water it ere it dies. One day its fruit will reward your care.
From the outset raise a wall round your child's soul; another may
sketch the plan, you alone should carry it into execution.

Plants are fashioned by cultivation, man by education. If a man
were born tall and strong, his size and strength would be of no
good to him till he had learnt to use them; they would even harm
him by preventing others from coming to his aid; [Footnote: Like
them in externals, but without speech and without the ideas which
are expressed by speech, he would be unable to make his wants known,
while there would be nothing in his appearance to suggest that he
needed their help.] left to himself he would die of want before he
knew his needs. We lament the helplessness of infancy; we fail to
perceive that the race would have perished had not man begun by
being a child.

We are born weak, we need strength; helpless, we need aid; foolish,
we need reason. All that we lack at birth, all that we need when
we come to man's estate, is the gift of education.

This education comes to us from nature, from men, or from things.
The inner growth of our organs and faculties is the education of
nature, the use we learn to make of this growth is the education
of men, what we gain by our experience of our surroundings is the
education of things.

Thus we are each taught by three masters. If their teaching
conflicts, the scholar is ill-educated and will never be at peace
with himself; if their teaching agrees, he goes straight to his
goal, he lives at peace with himself, he is well-educated.

Now of these three factors in education nature is wholly beyond
our control, things are only partly in our power; the education of
men is the only one controlled by us; and even here our power is
largely illusory, for who can hope to direct every word and deed
of all with whom the child has to do.

Viewed as an art, the success of education is almost impossible,
since the essential conditions of success are beyond our control.
Our efforts may bring us within sight of the goal, but fortune must
favour us if we are to reach it.

What is this goal? As we have just shown, it is the goal of nature.
Since all three modes of education must work together, the two
that we can control must follow the lead of that which is beyond
our control. Perhaps this word Nature has too vague a meaning. Let
us try to define it.

Nature, we are told, is merely habit. What does that mean? Are there
not habits formed under compulsion, habits which never stifle nature?
Such, for example, are the habits of plants trained horizontally.
The plant keeps its artificial shape, but the sap has not changed
its course, and any new growth the plant may make will be vertical.
It is the same with a man's disposition; while the conditions remain
the same, habits, even the least natural of them, hold good; but
change the conditions, habits vanish, nature reasserts herself.
Education itself is but habit, for are there not people who forget
or lose their education and others who keep it? Whence comes
this difference? If the term nature is to be restricted to habits
conformable to nature we need say no more.

We are born sensitive and from our birth onwards we are affected
in various ways by our environment. As soon as we become conscious
of our sensations we tend to seek or shun the things that cause
them, at first because they are pleasant or unpleasant, then because
they suit us or not, and at last because of judgments formed by
means of the ideas of happiness and goodness which reason gives
us. These tendencies gain strength and permanence with the growth
of reason, but hindered by our habits they are more or less warped
by our prejudices. Before this change they are what I call Nature
within us.

Everything should therefore be brought into harmony with these
natural tendencies, and that might well be if our three modes of
education merely differed from one another; but what can be done
when they conflict, when instead of training man for himself you
try to train him for others? Harmony becomes impossible. Forced to
combat either nature or society, you must make your choice between
the man and the citizen, you cannot train both.

The smaller social group, firmly united in itself and dwelling
apart from others, tends to withdraw itself from the larger society.
Every patriot hates foreigners; they are only men, and nothing to
him.[Footnote: Thus the wars of republics are more cruel than those
of monarchies. But if the wars of kings are less cruel, their peace
is terrible; better be their foe than their subject.] This defect
is inevitable, but of little importance. The great thing is to be
kind to our neighbours. Among strangers the Spartan was selfish,
grasping, and unjust, but unselfishness, justice, and harmony ruled
his home life. Distrust those cosmopolitans who search out remote
duties in their books and neglect those that lie nearest. Such
philosophers will love the Tartars to avoid loving their neighbour.

The natural man lives for himself; he is the unit, the whole,
dependent only on himself and on his like. 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 unit
in the group, so that he no longer regards himself as one, but as
a part of the whole, and is only conscious of the common life. A
citizen of Rome was neither Caius nor Lucius, he was a Roman; he
ever loved his country better than his life. The captive Regulus
professed himself a Carthaginian; as a foreigner he refused to take
his seat in the Senate except at his master's bidding. He scorned
the attempt to save his life. He had his will, and returned in
triumph to a cruel death. There is no great likeness between Regulus
and the men of our own day.

The Spartan Pedaretes presented himself for admission to the council
of the Three Hundred and was rejected; he went away rejoicing that
there were three hundred Spartans better than himself. I suppose he
was in earnest; there is no reason to doubt it. That was a citizen.

A Spartan mother had five sons with the army. A Helot arrived;
trembling she asked his news. "Your five sons are slain." "Vile
slave, was that what I asked thee?" "We have won the victory."
She hastened to the temple to render thanks to the gods. That was
a citizen.

He who would preserve the supremacy of natural feelings in social
life knows not what he asks. 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 nor to others. He will
be a man of our day, a Frenchman, an Englishman, one of the great
middle class.

To be something, to be himself, and always at one with himself, a
man must act as he speaks, must know what course he ought to take,
and must follow that course with vigour and persistence. When I
meet this miracle it will be time enough to decide whether he is
a man or a citizen, or how he contrives to be both.

Two conflicting types of educational systems spring from these
conflicting aims. One is public and common to many, the other
private and domestic.

If you wish to know what is meant by public education, read Plato's
Republic. Those who merely judge books by their titles take this for
a treatise on politics, but it is the finest treatise on education
ever written.

In popular estimation the Platonic Institute stands for all that
is fanciful and unreal. For my own part I should have thought the
system of Lycurgus far more impracticable had he merely committed
it to writing. Plato only sought to purge man's heart; Lycurgus
turned it from its natural course.

The public institute does not and cannot exist, for there is neither
country nor patriot. The very words should be struck out of our
language. The reason does not concern us at present, so that though
I know it I refrain from stating it.

I do not consider our ridiculous colleges [Footnote: There are
teachers dear to me in many schools and especially in the University
of Paris, men for whom I have a great respect, men whom I believe
to be quite capable of instructing young people, if they were not
compelled to follow the established custom. I exhort one of them
to publish the scheme of reform which he has thought out. Perhaps
people would at length seek to cure the evil if they realised that
there was a remedy.] as public institutes, nor do I include under
this head a fashionable education, for this education facing two
ways at once achieves nothing. It is only fit to turn out hypocrites,
always professing to live for others, while thinking of themselves
alone. These professions, however, deceive no one, for every one
has his share in them; they are so much labour wasted.

Our inner conflicts are caused by these contradictions. 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.

There remains the education of the home or of nature; but how will
a man live with others if he is educated for himself alone? If
the twofold aims could be resolved into one by removing the man's
self-contradictions, one great obstacle to his happiness would be
gone. To judge of this you must see the man full-grown; you must
have noted his inclinations, watched his progress, followed his
steps; in a word you must really know a natural man. When you have
read this work, I think you will have made some progress in this
inquiry.

What must be done to train this exceptional man! We can do much,
but the chief thing is to prevent anything being done. To sail
against the wind we merely follow one tack and another; to keep our
position in a stormy sea we must cast anchor. Beware, young pilot,
lest your boat slip its cable or drag its anchor before you know
it.

In the social order where each has his own place a man must be
educated for it. If such a one leave his own station he is fit for
nothing else. His education is only useful when fate agrees with
his parents' choice; if not, education harms the scholar, if only
by the prejudices it has created. In Egypt, where the son was
compelled to adopt his father's calling, education had at least
a settled aim; where social grades remain fixed, but the men who
form them are constantly changing, no one knows whether he is not
harming his son by educating him for his own class.

In the natural order men are all equal and their common calling
is that of manhood, so that a well-educated man cannot fail to do
well in that calling and those related to it. It matters little to
me whether my pupil is intended for the army, the church, or the
law. Before his parents chose a calling for him nature called him
to be a man. Life is the trade I would teach him. When he leaves
me, I grant you, he will be neither a magistrate, a soldier, nor a
priest; he will be a man. All that becomes a man he will learn as
quickly as another. In vain will fate change his station, he will
always be in his right place. "Occupavi te, fortuna, atque cepi;
omnes-que aditus tuos interclusi, ut ad me aspirare non posses."
The real object of our study is man and his environment. To my mind
those of us who can best endure the good and evil of life are the
best educated; hence it follows that true education consists less
in precept than in practice. We begin to learn when we begin to
live; our education begins with ourselves, our first teacher is
our nurse. The ancients used the word "Education" in a different
sense, it meant "Nurture." "Educit obstetrix," says Varro. "Educat
nutrix, instituit paedagogus, docet magister." Thus, education,
discipline, and instruction are three things as different in
their purpose as the dame, the usher, and the teacher. But these
distinctions are undesirable and the child should only follow one
guide.

We must therefore look at the general rather than the particular,
and consider our scholar as man in the abstract, man exposed to all
the changes and chances of mortal life. If men were born attached
to the soil of our country, if one season lasted all the year round,
if every man's fortune were so firmly grasped that he could never
lose it, then the established method of education would have
certain advantages; the child brought up to his own calling would
never leave it, he could never have to face the difficulties of
any other condition. But when we consider the fleeting nature of
human affairs, the restless and uneasy spirit of our times, 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
about him? If the wretched creature takes a single step up or down
he is lost. This is not teaching him to bear pain; it is training
him to feel it.

People think only of preserving their child's life; this is not
enough, he must be taught to preserve his own life when he is a
man, to bear the buffets of fortune, to brave wealth and poverty,
to live at need among the snows of Iceland or on the scorching rocks
of Malta. In vain you guard against death; he must needs die; and
even if you do not kill him with your precautions, they are mistaken.
Teach him to live rather than to avoid death: life is not breath,
but action, the use of our senses, our mind, our faculties, every
part of ourselves which makes us conscious of our being. Life
consists less in length of days than in the keen sense of living.
A man maybe buried at a hundred and may never have lived at all.
He would have fared better had he died young.

Our wisdom is slavish prejudice, our customs consist in control,
constraint, 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.

I am told that many midwives profess to improve the shape of the
infant's head by rubbing, and they are allowed to do it. Our heads
are not good enough as God made them, they must be moulded outside
by the nurse and inside by the philosopher. The Caribs are better
off than we are. The child has hardly left the mother's womb, it
has hardly begun to move and stretch its limbs, when it is deprived
of its freedom. It is wrapped in swaddling bands, laid down with
its head fixed, its legs stretched out, and its arms by its sides;
it is wound round with linen and bandages of all sorts so that it
cannot move. It is fortunate if it has room to breathe, and it is
laid on its side so that water which should flow from its mouth can
escape, for it is not free to turn its head on one side for this
purpose.

The new-born child requires to stir and stretch his limbs to free
them from the stiffness resulting from being curled up so long.
His limbs are stretched indeed, but he is not allowed to move them.
Even the head is confined by a cap. One would think they were afraid
the child should look as if it were alive.

Thus the internal impulses which should lead to growth find an
insurmountable obstacle in the way of the necessary movements. The
child exhausts his strength in vain struggles, or he gains strength
very slowly. He was freer and less constrained in the womb; he has
gained nothing by birth.