What Rousseau next says of the necessity and the method of freeing the child early, by careful habituation (), from those irrational fears and repulsions which derange so many lives-fear of spiders, toads, mice, masks, detonations, darkness, etc. is excellent; but he records a very exceptional experience when he says, "I have never seen a peasant man, woman, or child-afraid of spiders." Much of that unlovely trait of fastidiousness, which at the present day so often degenerates into cruel unsympathy for all that is not immaculate, sweet-scented, and æsthetic, is due to a neglect of Rousseau's precepts.

In course of time, the child emerges from mere "affective" sensations, and begins to construct, out of that portion of these which is less urgent, a world of things in time and space. What Rousseau has to say of this transition contains much truth, and testifies to fine observation; but it is marred throughout by a false metaphysics, which made him think that the world of external objects is one thing, and the system of his organized sensations another. What can we say to a passage like the following, for example? "In the early part of life, when memory and imagina

habit of using the same sounds for the same thoughts? Had Rousseau said that, while education is the acquisition of habits that create a world of harmony between the individual and his fellowbeings, conscious and unconscious, and, therefore, the very condition of life and progress, yet the individual should be careful not to allow any habit to master him, when it proves prejudicial to such life or progress, he would have uttered a great and fruitful truth. But his whole vision was dimmed by the false notion that the normal man is the natural man, and the latter a solitary savage, obedient to his momentary instincts and caprices. Such a man never did, or could, exist.

tion are still inactive, the child attends only to what affects its senses. Its sensations being the first materials of its knowledge, by offering them to it in a suitable order we are preparing its memory to furnish them, later, in the same order, to its understanding; but, since it attends only to its sensations, it is enough at first to show it very distinctly the connection of these same sensations with the objects that cause them." Just as if the very objects were not groups of sensations, already organized into things in time and space, by the activity of the distinguishing understanding! (And as if a child, attentive only to sensations, could be conscious of any objects to refer them to! When it is conscious of such objects, its understanding has already been at work in complicated and far-reaching ways. Rousseau's prejudice in favor of sensation, and against understanding, closed his eyes to the most obvious facts, and led him into the gravest errors with regard to early education.1 Man is a "rational animal" from the first moment of his existence. His first conscious feeling, however vague, implies an act of the understanding, which is busy organizing sensations long before it knows anything of an "external world." His very body is but organized sensation. Rousseau, however, failing to see this, but recognizing that the notions of good and evil are due to reason, maintains that, in its earliest years, the child is incapable of any moral education: if controlled at all, it must be controlled by simple

1 In this connection should be read Rosmini's unfinished work, The Ruling Principle of Method in Education, translated by Mrs. William Grey. Boston: D. C. Heath & Co.

force. "Reason alone,” he says, “acquaints us with good and evil. The conscience, which makes us love the one and hate the other, though independent of reason, cannot develop without it. Before the age of reason, we do good and evil without knowing that we do, and there is no morality in our actions, although there sometimes is in the feeling about others' actions having relation to us. A child tries to upset everything he sees; he breaks or rends everything he can lay his hands upon; he grasps a bird as he would a stone, and chokes it without knowing what he is doing."

Rousseau is entirely right in maintaining that such actions imply no innate evil on the part of the child, being merely so many modes in which it gives effective expression to its undisciplined activity; nor is he wrong when he says that the child's desire to dominate others and make them act for it- a desire which readily degenerates into tyranny, impatience, badness proceeds from the same source. To prevent such degenerations, he lays down four maxims, whose intent, he says, is "to give more real liberty and less authority (empire) to children, to allow them to do more for themselves, and exact less from others." The gist of them is, that the child should be helped, as far as necessary, to do whatever is really necessary for its physical well-being, and no farther; that no attention should be paid to its whims, opinions, or

1 Here again we have both bad psychology and bad metaphysics. That which cannot develop without something else is surely not independent of that something; for a thing is not distinct from its development. And surely the love of good is not something irra tional; nor is the mind a group of separate "faculties."

irrational desires. This would be unexceptionable, if the child's spiritual needs had been taken into account; but the omission is characteristic of Rousseau.

The first book of Emile closes with a number of disconnected precepts, such as, that a child should never be allowed to have anything because it cries for it; that it should not be weaned too soon; that it should not be fed on milk gruel; that it should not have heaps of gaudy and expensive toys; that it should be made to cut its teeth on soft objects; that it should be confined to a small vocabulary, but taught to articulate its words correctly from the first. Most of these are wise, and certainly "according to Nature!"

CHAPTER VI

ROUSSEAU'S EDUCATIONAL THEORIES

CHILDHOOD

(Emile, Bk. II.)

Despise but Reason and Science, man's supreme power; allow thyself but to be confirmed by the Spirit of Lies in works of glamor and enchantment, then I have thee already without (Mephistopheles in) Faust, Pt. I., lines 1498-1502

condition. (Schröer).

WITH the advent of language, infancy closes, and childhood, in the narrower sense, begins. Tears and cries, having now found a substitute, should be discouraged, and every effort made to free the child from timidity and querulousness. Dangerous weapons and fire should be kept out of his way; but otherwise he should be allowed the utmost freedom, and as little notice as possible taken of his occasional bumps and bruises, which are valuable experiences. He should not be taught anything that he can naturally find out for himself-not even to walk or climb. Having complete freedom, he will get a few contusions, but therewith a great deal of invaluable training. "It is at this second stage," says Rousseau, "that the life of the individual properly begins; it is now that he attains self-consciousness. Memory extends the feeling of identity to all the moments of his existence;