the most important is, that there are many which he does not know, but which he may know some time; many more which other men know, but which he will never know all his life, and an infinity of others which no man will ever know."1 "Emile has only 2 natural and purely physical knowledge. He does not know even the name of history, or the meaning of metaphysics or morals. He knows the essential relations of men to things, but none of the moral relations of man to man. He knows little about how to generalize ideas, or to make abstractions. He sees qualities common to certain bodies, without reasoning about these qualities themselves. He knows abstract extension by the help of geometrical figures, and abstract quantity by means of algebraic signs. These figures and signs are the support of those abstractions upon which his senses rest. He does not try to know things through their nature, but only through the relations which interest him. He estimates what is foreign to him only by its relation to himself; but this estimation is accurate and certain. Fancy and convention play no part in it. He lays most stress upon what is most useful to him, and, never departing from this way of estimating, he sets no store by opinion. Émile is laborious, temperate, patient, firm, courageous. His imagination, not having been 1 That he, or anybody else, could arrive at such knowledge as this is a miracle surely. 2 Rousseau does not see that every idea, whether simple or complex, involves both generalization and abstraction. It is certain that he would never know either by any such means. 4 We find an exhibition of these virtues on p. 142. Isucial 2 fired in any way,' never magnifies dangers for him. He is sensible to few evils, and he can suffer with firmness, because he has not learnt to wrangle with fate." "In a word, Émile has all the virtues that relate to himself. In order to have also the social virtues, he merely requires to have the relations which call for them, and the light which his mind is now completely ready to receive. He thinks of himself without regard to others, and is content that others should not think of him. He asks nothing of anybody, and does not feel that he owes anything to anybody. He is also alone in human society, and relies only on himself. As much as any one, he has a right to do this; for he is all that one can be at his age. He has no errors, or only such as are inevitable. He has no vices, or only those against which no man is safe. His body is healthy; his limbs agile; he is fair-minded and unprejudiced, heart-free and passionless. Self-love even, the first and most natural of all the passions, has hardly yet begun to stir. Without 4 1 Robinson Crusoe seems to have proved somewhat firing. See p. 143. 2 See above, p. 142. For 8 For what? we may ask. For his food and clothing? the roof over his head? For self-guidance? If so, his tutor may vanish. 4 This is certainly very wide of the truth. 5 We have to take Rousseau's word for this. He has furnished us no proof for it. A boy of fifteen or sixteen, with no human relations but those of a puppet worked by the hidden wires of a magician tutor, cannot be said to have either virtues or vices. His will having never been called into exercise, he is altogether in a submoral condition, knowing neither good nor evil. At best, he is a well-trained animal. disquieting any one, he has lived contented, happy, so far as Nature has allowed." 1 Such is Émile, at the age of puberty, an altogether fantastic and impossible creature, a human automaton, neither man nor beast, utterly unloving and unlovable. Instead of being richly and plastically moulded by the manifold influences of society, he has been cast in a rigid, beggarly mould, by one man's cold caprice, calling itself natural necessity. 1 No, as far as Rousseau's utterly false views of Nature have allowed. In fact, Émile has all the time been caged, watched, and trained in ignorance into complete artificiality. CHAPTER VIII ROUSSEAU'S EDUCATIONAL THEORIES ADOLESCENCE (Emile, Bk. IV.) A warmth within the breast would melt TENNYSON, In Memoriam, cxxiv. In my dealing with my child, my Latin and Greek, my accomplishments, and my money stead me nothing; but as much soul as I have avails. If I am wilful, he sets his will against mine, one for one, and leaves me, if I please, the degradation of beating him by my superiority of strength. EMERSON. IT is the misfortune of all those people who despise or undervalue patient research, and careful reasoning from the same, that, when they undertake to write, they are forced to substitute for the true arrangements of science, specious schemes drawn from their own undisciplined imaginations. It was owing to such a misfortune that Rousseau was led to adopt the neat and pretty formula that, before the age of puberty the human being, having no sympathetic imagination, is guided entirely by selfish or egoistic instincts, and that only after that, and through the 156 physical and emotional changes consequent upon it, he begins to manifest social instincts. These, he thinks, are awakened by the imagination, and the imagination, which enables us to go beyond ourselves and identify ourselves with others, springs up with the sexual instinct. That Rousseau should favor this view, is intelligible enough. So portentous and all-pervasive was the part played by the sexual passion in his own life, that it may fairly be said to have extended to every human relation which had any attraction for him. A relation without something of this meant nothing to him. This is the secret of his aversion to society, whose nobler relations have nothing to do with sexuality. And the theory itself is obtrusively untrue. Not only "is man by nature a political animal," but almost from the dawn of consciousness the child shows social sympathies, and gives evidence of lively imaginations. Very small children love their brothers, sisters, and playmates, and grieve when separated from them. Their attachment to their mothers and nurses is often deep and genuine.1 Nor only so; but they learn quite early to understand social relations and to make moral distinctions. The latter may not always be correct; but that has nothing to do with the matter. Many children, at five or six, have very tender consciences, and are inconsolable when they think that they have done wrong, though they have no punishment to fear.2 1 I knew a child of four who cried bitterly, because some one had said that his nurse, a very plain, almost grotesque, old woman, was not handsome. 2 Rousseau, speaking of himself at the age of seven, says: “I had no idea of things, though all the feelings were already known |