“Émile,” says Gréard, “is a child of nature, brought up by nature, according to the rules of nature, for the satisfaction of the needs of nature. This sophism is not merely inscribed at random on the frontispiece of the book, but is its very soul; and it is by reason of this sophistry that, separated from the body of reflections and maxims that give it so powerful an interest, Rousseau’s plan of education is but a dangerous chimera.”
Everything that society has established, Rousseau condemns in a lump as fictitious and artificial. Conventional usages he despises; and he places Émile at the school of nature, and brings him up almost like a savage.
On the other hand, the education of Émile is negative, at least till his twelfth year; that is, Rousseau lets nature have her way till then. For those who think nature evil, education ought to be a work of compression and of repression. But nature is good; and so education consists simply in letting her have free course. To guard the child from the shock of opinions, to form betimes a defence about his soul, to assure against every exterior influence the free development of his faculties—such is the end that he proposes to himself.
Another general principle of the Émile, another truth which Rousseau’s spirit of paradox quickly transforms into error, is the idea of the distinction of ages:—
“Each age, each state of life, has its proper perfection, and a sort of maturity which is its own. We have often heard of a man grown; but let us think of a child grown. That sight will be newer to us, and perhaps not less agreeable.”
“We do not know infancy. With the false ideas we have, the further we go, the more we are astray. The most learned give their attention to that which it is important for men to know without considering what children are in a condition to comprehend. They always look for the man in the child, without thinking of what he was before he became a man.”
“Everything is right so far, and from these observations there proceeds a progressive education, exactly conforming in its successive requirements to the progress of the faculties. But Rousseau does not stop in his course, and he goes beyond progressive education to recommend an education in fragments, so to speak, which isolates the faculties in order to develop them one after another, which establishes an absolute line of demarkation between the different ages, and which ends in distinguishing three stages of progress in the soul. Rousseau’s error on this point is in forgetting that the education of the child ought to prepare for the education of the young man. Instead of considering the different ages as the several rings of one and the same chain, he separates them sharply from one another. He does not admit that marvellous unity of the human soul, which seems so strong in man only because God has, so to speak, woven its bands into the child and there fastened them.” (Gréard).
309. Romantic Character of the Émile.—A final observation is necessary before entering into an analysis of the Émile; it is that in this, as in his other works, Rousseau is not averse to affecting singularities, and with deliberation and effrontery to break with received opinions. Doubtless we should not go so far as to say with certain critics that the Émile is rather the feat of a wit than the serious expression of a grave and serious thought; but what it is impossible not to grant is that which Rousseau himself admits in his preface: “One will believe that he is reading, not so much a book on education as the reveries of a visionary.” Émile, in fact, is an imaginary being whom Rousseau places in strange conditions. He does not give him parents, but has him brought up by a preceptor in the country, far from all society. Émile is a character in a romance rather than a real man.
310. Division of the Work.—Without doubt, there are in the Émile long passages and digressions that make the reading of it more agreeable and its analysis more difficult. But, notwithstanding all this, the author confines himself to a methodical plan, at least to a chronological order. The different ages of Émile serve as a principle for the division of the work. The first two books treat especially of the infant and of the earliest period of life up to the age of twelve. The only question here discussed is the education of the body and the exercise of the senses. The third book corresponds to the period of intellectual education, from the twelfth to the fifteenth year. In the fourth book, Rousseau studies moral education, from the fifteenth to the twentieth year.