Finally, the fifth book, in which the romantic spirit is still rampant, is devoted to the education of woman.
311. The First Two Books of the Émile.—It would be useless to search this first part of the Émile for precepts relative to the education of the mind and the heart. Rousseau has purposely eliminated from the first twelve years of the child’s life everything which concerns instruction and moral discipline. At the age of twelve, Émile will know how to run, jump, and judge of distances; but he will be perfectly ignorant. The idea would be that he has studied nothing at all, and “that he has not learned to distinguish his right hand from his left.”
The exclusive characteristic of Émile’s education, during this first period, is, then, the preoccupation with physical development and with the training of the senses.
Out of many errors, we shall see displayed some admirable flashes of good sense, and grand truths inspired by the principle of nature.
312. Let Nature have her Way.—What does nature demand? She demands that the child have liberty of movement, and that nothing interfere with the nascent activities of his limbs. What do we do, on the contrary? We put him in swaddling clothes; we imprison him. He is deformed by his over-tight garments,—the first chains that are imposed on a being who is destined to have so many others to bear! On this subject, the bad humor of Rousseau does not tire. He is prodigal in outbreaks of spirit, often witty, and sometimes ridiculous.
“It seems,” he says, “as though we fear that the child may appear to be alive.” “Man is born, lives, and dies, in a state of slavery; at his birth he is stitched into swaddling-clothes; at his death he is nailed in his coffin; and as long as he preserves the human form he is held captive by our institutions.”
We shall not dwell on these extravagances of language which transforms a coffin and a child’s long-clothes into institutions. The protests of Rousseau have contributed towards a reformation of usages; but, even on this point, with his great principle that everything must be referred to nature, because whatever nature does she does well, the author of Émile is on the point of going astray. No more for the body than for the mind is nature sufficient in herself; she must have help and watchful assistance. Strong supports are needed to prevent too active movements and dangerous strains of the body; just as, later on, there will be needed a vigorous moral authority to moderate and curb the passions of the soul.
313. The Mother to nurse her own Children.—But there is another point where it has become trite to praise Rousseau, and where his teaching should be accepted without reserve. This is when he strongly protests against the use of hired nurses, and when he eloquently summons mothers to the duties of nursing their own children. Where there is no mother, there is no child, says Rousseau, and he adds, where there is no mother, there is no family! “Would you recall each one to his first duties? Begin with the mothers. You will be astonished at the changes you will produce!” It would be to fall into platitudes to set forth, after Rousseau, and after so many others, the reasons which recommend nursing by the mother. We merely observe that Rousseau insists on this, especially on moral grounds. It is not merely the health of the child; it is the virtue and the morality of the family; it is the dignity of the home, that he wishes to defend and preserve. And, in fact, how many other duties are provided for and made easier by the performance of a primal duty.
314. Hardening of the Body.—So far, the lessons of nature have instructed Rousseau. He is still right when he wishes Émile to grow hardy, to become inured to privations, to become accustomed at an early hour to pain, and to learn how to suffer; but from being a stoic, Rousseau soon becomes a cynic. Contempt for pain gives place to a contempt for proprieties. Émile shall be a barefoot, like Diogenes. Locke gives his pupil thin shoes; Rousseau, surpassing him, completely abolishes shoes. He would also like to suppress all the inventions of civilization. Thus Émile, accustomed to walk in the dark, will do without candles. “I would rather have Émile with eyes at the ends of his fingers than in the shop of a candle-maker.” All this tempts us to laugh; but here are graver errors. Rousseau objects to vaccination, and proscribes medicine. Émile is forehanded. He is in duty bound to be well. A physician will be summoned only when he is in danger of death. Again, Rousseau forbids the washing of the new-born child in wine, because wine is a fermented liquor, and nature produces nothing that is fermented. And so there must be no playthings made by the hand of man. A twig of a tree or a poppy-head will suffice. Rousseau, as we see, by reason of his wish to make of his pupil a man of nature, brings him into singular likeness with the wild man, and assimilates him almost to the brute.
315. Negative Education.—It is evident that the first period of life is that in which the use of negative education is both the least dangerous and the most acceptable. Ordinarily, Émile’s preceptor will be but the inactive witness, the passive spectator of the work done by nature. Had Rousseau gone to the full length of his system, he ought to have abolished the preceptor himself, in order to allow the child to make his way all alone. But if the preceptor is tolerated, it is not to act directly on Émile, it is not to perform the duties of a professor, in teaching him what it is important for a child to know; but it is simply to put him in the way of the discoveries which he ought to make for himself in the wide domain of nature, and to arrange and to combine, artificially and laboriously, those complicated scenes which are intended to replace the lessons of ordinary education. Such, for example, is the scene of the juggler, where Émile is to acquire at the same time notions on physics and on ethics. Such, again, is the conversation with the gardener, Robert, who reveals to him the idea of property. The preceptor is no longer a teacher, but a mechanic. The true educator is nature, but nature prepared and skillfully adjusted to serve the ends that we propose to attain. Rousseau admits only the teaching of things:—