“I found that he had an unusual admiration for the courage, so much lauded, of Alexander. But do you know in what he saw that courage? Simply in the fact that he swallowed a drink that had a bad taste.”
And from this Rousseau concludes that the child’s intelligence is not sufficiently open to comprehend history, and that he ought not to learn it. The paradox is evident. Because Émile is sometimes exposed to the danger of falling into errors of judgment, must he be denied the opportunity of judging? Similarly, Rousseau does not permit the study of the languages. Up to the age of twelve, Émile shall know but one language, because, till then, incapable of judging and comprehending, he cannot make the comparison between other languages and his own. Later, from twelve to fifteen, Rousseau will find still other reasons for excluding the study of the ancient languages. And it is not only history and the languages; it is literature in general from which Émile is excluded by Rousseau. No book shall be put into his hands, not even the Fables of La Fontaine. It is well known with what resolution Rousseau criticises The Crow and the Fox.
318. Education of the Senses.—The grand preoccupation of Rousseau is the exercise and development of the senses of his pupil. The whole theory of object lessons, and even all the exaggerations of what is now called the intuitive method, are contained in germ in the Émile:—
“The first faculties which are formed and perfected in us are the senses. These, then, are the first which should be cultivated; but these are the very ones that we forget or that we neglect the most.”
Rousseau does not consider the senses as wholly formed by nature; but he makes a special search for the means of forming them and of perfecting them through education.
“To call into exercise the senses, is, so to speak, to learn to feel; for we can neither touch, nor see, nor hear, except as we have been taught.”
Only, Rousseau is wrong in sacrificing everything to this education of the senses. He sharply criticises this favorite maxim of Locke, “We must reason with children.” Rousseau retards the education of the judgment and the reason, and declares that “he would as soon require that a child be five feet high as that he reason at the age of eight.”
319. The Third Book of the Émile.—From the twelfth to the fifteenth year is the length of time that Rousseau has devoted to study and to intellectual development proper. It is necessary that the robust animal, “the roe-buck,” as he calls Émile, after a negative and temporizing education of twelve years, become in three years an enlightened intelligence. As the period is short, Rousseau disposes of the time for instruction with a miser’s hand. Moreover, Émile is very poorly prepared for the rapid studies which are to be imposed on him. Not having acquired in his earlier years the habit of thinking, having lived a purely physical existence, he will have great difficulty in bringing to life, within a few months, his intellectual faculties.
But without dwelling on the unfavorable conditions of Émile’s intellectual education, let us see in what it will consist.